Biggest Lighting Mistakes and How to Fix Them

hi everyone it's nick welcome and welcome back to my channel so as you can see behind me i am no longer in the airbnb that i have been staying in for the last four months so basically i had a flood a few months ago and i had to move into the airbnb because all my place had to be restored the flooring the like all my furniture had to be put into storage it was a whole big deal but now i am back i am in my apartment and so excited because today i'm gonna be talking to you about the most common lighting mistakes that i see over and over and over again as well as some tips for how you can fix them okay so mistake number one that i see over and over and over again is people selecting the wrong temperature lighting for their space so let's first give you a little crash course in lighting temperature so the unit of measurement here is called calvin and if you're looking at something that's like a 2700 to maybe even closer to 3 000 kelvin that is a really warm lighting so you're gonna see it kind of has like an orangey golden sort of hue to it on the other end of the spectrum once you start getting into four or five thousand kelvin you're starting to get into sort of daylight balance lighting you're getting into sort of that bluish tinged cooler lighting and what i see over and over again is people go to the hardware store they grab some light bulbs off the shelf they plug it into their light fixtures and their place looks like a hospital which is something you see over and over and over again and that's because they are using light bulbs that are daylight balance they're using ones that are higher on that calvin could be like 5 000 kelvin and you know those light bulbs are not really meant to go in a lighting fixture say in your living room or in your bedroom those are meant for things like um hospitals which is what you made your living room look like didn't you um they are meant for retail they're meant for offices because they give you a lot of energy that's what they're there for uh they're not really meant for sort of relaxation and uh for i say a living room or a bedroom setting so what you're gonna look for is choosing probably closer to the warmer or into the neutral end of that range um and you know that airbnb i told you about where i've been living in that's where this inspiration for this video came from because they had golden sort of 2700 probably kelvin light bulbs in the uh lamps but then above they had this like 5000 kelvin white light that i never turned on so tips on how to fix this i would say that in things like bedrooms or living rooms uh or even in dining room areas your probably best bet is to use something like a 2700 or even a 3000 calvin lipo something in the 3000 maybe even as high as 4000 range is really great for bathrooms uh could be great for outdoor um it could be really good for entryways hallways things like that and i would save those 5000 kelvin light bulbs uh in the home i would use that maybe in a basement with like no natural light but again like you've really got to be careful with that or maybe even something like a garage okay mistake number two that i see over and over again is people just using one light bulb and plunking it into the center of the room and calling it a day this is when again people go to the hardware store they grab a light bulb and they just stick it in the center of the room and they don't care about any accented lighting they don't care about different layers of lighting and the reason this is a mistake is because it doesn't create lighting that's really attractive or maybe really visually interesting so you're just basically getting lighting playing off of one source it's going to create a lot of really harsh shadows and it's not going to create a space that's visually interesting so the solution to that is to provide layers of lighting in your space so how to do that the three areas of lighting are ambient lighting task lighting and accent lighting so ambient lighting is everything from a chandelier could be pendants it could be recessed lighting in the ceiling uh it could be pot lights but basically the ambient lighting is kind of the first light that really is there to serve the function of kind of helping you navigate the space it's there to basically light the room and again you might have several different types of ambient lighting in a space to make it a little bit more interesting and sort of just add a little bit of dimension into your space the second type of lighting is called task lighting which you know seems obvious by the name but task lighting is there basically to serve the function of helping you or assisting you in the task that you're doing so an example of that would be say a bathroom vanity or it could be lighting strips for when you open your doors it could be under counter or under your cabinets in your kitchen uh it could be lighting pendants over top of your island or over top of your peninsula so task lighting is there to provide lighting to accomplish a specific task in your space and then the third type of lighting is going to be accent lighting so this is lighting that exists to sort of accent and sort of emphasize a specific maybe piece of art in your space uh could be maybe a console table or something that you kind of have that you really want to draw attention to so that can be in the form of like a wall sconce or it can be in the form of a spotlight just some sort of a way to sort of accent a specific area of the home that you're really um trying to emphasize so by incorporating all different types of lighting you're able to create a space that's much more dynamic much more interesting and you're really able to sort of visually play off of the different decor pieces and design of your space as opposed to just fitting that one stupid light bulb in the center of the room that's not really doing any favors okay the third mistake that i see over and over again is people being content with just the builder grade fixtures that they've been given um specifically looking at you boob light you know what i mean like people just kind of taking the lighting that they were given maybe when they bought the place or when they moved in if they're a renter and they just say okay well that's the lighting that's there i don't have to do anything with it the biggest thing that people do the biggest mistake is they just don't change it they don't change their lighting they just stick with whatever whatever crap is basically sitting in their ceiling and that's not really that interesting and remember spaces are three-dimensional so a lot of the times people just kind of think of their space as just going outward but you want the eye to travel up and down as well you want to be able to draw attention into you know the three-dimensional space that is your home and so lighting is a really big part of that because it moves the eye up and down to create a space that's more interesting so you're really not doing yourself any favors by not swapping out that really builder grade basic lighting there are so many amazing lighting fixtures and by the way they're not even super expensive i'm going to link a bunch now i can link a bunch down in the description from from amazon or wayfair or ikea lots of different places there's so much lighting it's usually really quite affordable you don't have to go crazy with lighting it's a great way to save money is just to buy some cheaper lighting fixtures they're gonna be way more interesting than some basic boob light and by the way here's a tip for you renters because i've rented most of my life i can tell you that most places depending on your country in your state or province or whatever but most places most landlords will allow you to swap out the lighting so long as you just put the other lighting back so i did that in my last place i took out the boob light and i popped it into a closet and shoved it in there for three years and i put up my own lighting fixture and i stuck it there for a few years and then when i moved out i just swapped them back so you can absolutely do that obviously depends on the law of your kind of local area um but don't use an excuse just because you're renting that you need to have crappy lighting you can absolutely upgrade it and just change it out at the end okay mistake number four that i see with lighting all the time well yeah it happens quite a bit unfortunately and that is blinding your guests allow me to explain first of all don't blind your guests it seems obvious but i see so many spotlights where people spotlights are tricky right because like you don't just want to point them directly down because if you do it's just really boring and you might as well just get pot lights at that point um so you're looking at these spotlights and the great part is that you can sort of manipulate them and sort of twist them and kind of highlight and accent different pieces uh in your space which is awesome that's why spotlights can be great but be really careful about things like mirrors and hallways and people's different heights because i'm six foot one and if you know if you're maybe five foot two sorry i'll put the metric what that is down below um if you're maybe five foot two and i'm six foot one like we're going to experience spotlights a little bit differently so just make sure to really test out all different angles different hallways different ways that you can sort of interact with that light because so many times i walk into a space and i'm absolutely blinded with this like you know interrogation light bulb shining in my eyes so one time i was at a friend's house she's probably watching this so like i was sitting there on the couch and i was enjoying their company and i just couldn't stand the fact there was a light bulb while i was sitting on this couch shining this spotlight was shining directly my face so i waited until they weren't looking and then i went up and twisted it because i just couldn't stand the fact that i was being blinded while sitting in their house okay mistake number five that i see all the time is not using dimmers so it's 2021. there's no excuses for this anymore there are light bulbs with little apps attached there are dimmers that you can get on your wall there's lots of different ways that you can add a dimmer and again here although with the smart bulbs you can also change the color temperature so c point one yeah so this just means basically that during the daytime you can turn them down or turn them off but maybe you want a little bit of lighting in the day you know when there's more natural light but then in the evening of course when it's darker outside you can turn the you can turn the brightness up and that goes a long way to just make sure that your space you know the brightness of the light lighting is going to work for the time of day and for the task that you are doing okay so that's it for me for today guys i'm going to link here to a playlist of interior design mistakes so feel free to check that out if you're interested in learning about more mistakes and how to fix them and i will see you all in the next video thanks bye

Channel: Nick Lewis

Views: 304,677

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Id: M1vX-q69zH4

Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021