Living room lighting solutions

Lighting can play tricks with your colour scheme, with a subtle shift from daytime to artificial illumination. A cool, elegant blue grey of day becomes a warmer dove grey when lamplit at night by low-voltage halogen spots, reading lights and table lamps. The halogen spots are dimmable to suit different activities, creating contrasting areas of light and shade, washing the walls with pools of light rather than flooding the whole room.

Positioning directional halogen spotlights for ambient light is an effective way to highlight the shape of a room, accenting alcoves and recesses.

Avoid a central overhead light: instead opt for a combination of decorative and functional styles fitted with dimmers to give extra flexibility.

Remember that firelight will add life and movement in a similar way to candlelight.

Provide contrast by sitting your light sources at different levels. This enables them to act as focal points and to vary the line of vision.

Wall uplighters bounce light off the ceiling and make a room appear larger.

In a large living room, subdivide the area into smaller, more intimate spaces with pools of light.

For comfort, use rich fabric textures and matt paint surfaces that will absorb the light and draw warmth from it rather than bouncing back.

Choose lampshade shapes as carefully as the fittings themselves. Wide cylindrical shades let table lamps act as uplighters, casting a beam upwards to illuminate the corner of a room.