Tips on how to maximise natural light in your living space
Make the most of natural lighting to add dollops of cheer to your living area this festive season. It’s simply delightfull to see the magical transformation that takes place when natural lighting works its way into your living space. With the monsoon in its last legs, natural light works its way back into our abodes.
Architect Bijoy Nambiar says, “The way your home faces is important when thinking about how to use natural light”.
Designer Ambreesh Puri says, “Sit in all the rooms of your home throughout the day and you will notice where lighting needs to be supplemented. The right kind of lighting in the right space will add a glow and warmth to your surroundings.”
We bring you tips on how to enhance the flow of natural light and the warmth that it brings into your home.
Free up your windows
Perhaps the best way to start is by clearing your windows of obstruction and opening them up to the sunlight. Many windows have bars or heavy drapes that prevent the maximum amount of light from getting through. Obstacles on window edges or near the windows can act as barriers. If you want to maximize natural light in your house, it is best to remove obstacles like thick window frames, wall fittings near the windows, cupboards falling in the way of light or heavy curtain accessories.
Integrate your house with your yard
Sometimes the amount of natural light a home receives is just as much about perception as it is about reality. If your doors are open and if people are constantly going in and out of your house, for example, it is often easier to perceive that the home is getting its fair share of sun.
Repaint your walls
Dark walls absorb light while brighter walls tend to reflect it. On this note, painting your walls white is a great way to get more use out of the natural light that filters through your home’s windows.
Use reflective flooring
On a similar note, reflective floor surfaces can be equally helpful in creating a brighter interior space. The best options for this approach are white tile floors and well-shined hardwood flooring. Dark carpets, on the other hand, are generally to be avoided.
Glass accents are the perfect accessory to harness in dollops of sunlight that stream into your living space.
Floors: These can be used like mirrors. Luminous reflective hardwood will generate dynamic flecks of light throughout a room creating the highlights and low-lights needed to reproduce natural light. Rugs should be used sparingly and, when used, should be light or bright, bringing out the existing colors in the room.
Keep your windows clean
Although considered the most insignificant and basic of ideas, this is by far the most effective one for ensuring maximum transparency. It doesn’t cost a great deal – just a glass cleaner and a clean cloth to wipe with.
Use sheer curtains
Hang sheer curtains over your windows to allow sunlight in your room while still maintaining privacy. Made out of extra thin material, usually cotton or polyester blends, these curtains come in a multitude of colours and patterns, so finding a set that matches your sense of style and decor is easy.
Replace wood and brick surfaces with glass
Any wall in your home currently composed of wood, brick, or plaster can be replaced with glass so as to bring in more light. Since replacing a full wall is an incredibly expensive undertaking, many people choose instead to get rid of their wooden doors and put glass ones in their place – a far cheaper proposition.
Install a skylight
It goes without saying that a skylight can obviously help bring more natural light into your home. You can maximize its benefit by placing a new skylight in a room that, by design, doesn’t get much sun. Candidates include bathrooms, walk-in closets, and hallway corridors.
Enlarge your windows
Bigger windows will quickly translate into more light absorbed into your home. If you live in an older house with traditional square windows, an enlargement project of this sort could truly go a long way.
Raise your ceilings
Large rooms are usually more capable of trapping and reflecting natural light. Towards that end, knocking down your ceilings, eliminating your attic, and making your common areas taller can help these rooms feel far airier and brighter.
Maximize mirrors
Adding a mirror to a room reflects what light you do get in any room of your house. It makes the room seem larger, without a single change to the “nuts and bolts” of your house. Another good thing about mirrors is that they can be as expensive or inexpensive as you like, so they will appeal to those wanting more natural light, but still on a budget.
Interior Designer Priya Sehgal recommends tips to maximise natural light:
- Let light come through windows without interruptions. Remove secondary glazing, which absorbs light, and objects from window sills. Replace heavy curtains with blinds or muslin drapes.
- Choose light and bright paint colours. Shades such as pale green, blue and lilac will make a room look larger whereas red, orange, brown and black absorb will light and make it look smaller and darker. As a rule of thumb, the lighter the paint – the closer to white – the more reflective it is.
- Colours that work well in bright, hot climates look different in grey British daylight.
- Your choice of flooring will affect how light a room is. Carpets are soft, absorbent and hold the light whereas floorboards with a high-gloss finish reflect it around the room.
- Keep small, dark rooms bright and fresh, with as little pattern as possible. This will make the space look larger and lighter.
How light affects colour schemes: Architect Raghu Pillai
If the paint looks good in the tin, why does it end up making your room look small and gloomy? How we see colour depends on the light – and this in turn is dependent on many factors including the orientation of the room, the size of the space, the furniture you use and so on.
Note which way your room faces
This is an often-neglected element of decorating, but it really is vital to know because the quality of the light is different according to whether the room faces north, south, east or west. A different quality of light could mean, for example, that a neutral that looks stylish in your hall looks grey and dingy in your living room.
- North-facing rooms have cold light, and it’s more limited. However, it will be a steady light that doesn’t alter much, so your colour won’t look vastly different as the day goes on.
- South-facing rooms have plentiful, warmer light, and allow you to use colours that feel warm or cool.
- East-facing rooms will receive sunlight in the mornings, so the light is going to appear warmer then cooler as the day proceeds.
- West-facing rooms will receive sunlight in the afternoons, so as with east-facing rooms the light will change – here from cooler to warmer.
Pick colours that work with the room’s orientation
Colour can create the mood you want in your room – energetic, relaxing, formal, for example – but you will need to work with the room’s orientation in picking the right tone of colour.
- North-facing rooms need light colours if you’re going to make the most of the natural light available. Choose those with a warm note to them: pale yellow or pink and neutrals or whites with a creamy base rather than a grey one will make the light in the room feel warmer.
- South-facing rooms are easy in that you can pick colours that feel naturally warm (reds, oranges, yellows), or those that are naturally cooler (green, blue, violet) because of the light. Be aware, though, that with the sunshine pouring in colours might look dazzling, so you might want to lay off the pure whites, as well as considering the effect of brightening up already warm shades.
- East-facing rooms need to take into account the effect of the morning sun. In a bedroom, you may not want to choose a colour that comes too vividly to life at sunrise if you don’t have black-out blinds if this isn’t your preferred time to wake up!
- West-facing rooms that are largely used in the afternoon can be decorated in neutrals that are grey or cream-based or even pink-tinged to create a spacious feel. Alternatively, go for cool colours that will work well in the warm light as the day goes on. Paint a large section of lining paper with your proposed colour and hang it on the wall to test its effect before you commit.
Not much natural light: Lighting expert Nikhil Advani, Just Lights, Bangalore recommends:
You can’t create exposures or more natural light, but you can enhance the natural light you get. The objective is to “show how you can live in that space comfortably, without it feeling dark.” Dark spaces aren’t dark only because they don’t get natural light. There are two key ways to enhance natural light: improving interior reflectivity and reducing obstructions from furniture.
With reflectivity, you want to maximize the amount of times that daylight bounces inside the room. Use light colors that are “close to white” on ceilings, walls and floors, and avoiding glossy finishes. “Glossy surfaces can actually be a detriment because they can create glare,” he said. The safest finishes are matte finishes, because they reflect light in all directions.
Don’t want to cover the wall with dark hangings. Paintings and posters will absorb light.
As for reducing light obstructions, “Orient objects in the room to promote the flow of daylight,” he said. “So, things like bookshelves and partitions should be perpendicular to the window wall.” Light from the top of a window will reach the farthest into the apartment, so it is important not to block that part of the window with heavy blinds or drapery.
Another option: shades that travel from the bottom of the window upward, rather than top down. And you can supplement the sunlight with strategically placed light fixtures. Use indirect lighting, aimed at the ceiling.
