A Guide to Practical Bedroom Lighting Solutions

An essential feature of any bedroom interior design is lighting. This isn’t to say that lighting is not important in other areas of your home. It makes a huge difference in atmosphere and mood in any room including kitchens, bathrooms, studies, and hallways. However, it's specifically in the bedroom that lighting brings out several challenges that don’t come with other rooms. Unlike other rooms of the house, getting bedroom lighting right is a higher priority, as this is the room you’ll need to be absolutely comfortable in. 

Getting lighting right requires careful planning that takes its placement, the kind of fixtures to be used, the design, the type of bulbs, and more into consideration. Some of the most popular choices for lighting in the bedroom are popular because they provide luminance, comfort, efficiency, and style.

Lighting Styles

Flush Mount

Bedroom Lighting Options

You’ve most likely seen a flush mount fixture many times in your life, whether in a home, at an eatery, or business. But perhaps you haven't really given much thought to why it’s used over the traditional chandelier. There are many practical and stylistic reasons to have flush mounts as bedroom ceiling light fittings.

Flush-mounted lighting tends to be simpler in design when compared to more elaborate chandeliers. They’re usually surrounded by a single glass dome or cylinder. This simple design makes them easier to maintain and replace.

With the many surfaces and parts that complex chandeliers and traditional bedroom wall lights tend to have, it can be a real hassle to take them apart, clean them, and then put them back together. Additionally, other lighting fixtures that aren't flush-mounted have the small problem of small bugs getting stuck inside after being attracted to the light.

Master Bedroom Lighting Ideas

Another advantage of flush-mount or semi flush-mounted lighting fixtures is how effectively they light up a room. As a result of its round shape, the flush mount can disperse light all across the room from a single source. It’s cost-effective, provides all the light you’ll need, and comes in a variety of shapes that fits all sorts of interior designs.

Going with a more simple, rustic design? Perhaps you have dark wooden furniture, white and beige linen, with matte finish walls? A very simple but fitting round domed flush mount with a wooden rim to complement the rest of the furniture should work beautifully. Trying out something more modern and organic, but don’t want to overcomplicate things? You can try the semi-flush mounts, which hang a bit lower off the ceiling. The cylindrical variants with a tarp should do the trick.

It’s all about keeping to a stylized design but also making it practical for a bedroom, where you sometimes need the vary the brightness of your lights.

Recessed Lighting Fixtures

Lighting Solutions for the Bedroom

Recessed fixtures offer more organic and subtle lighting in the bedroom. They’re great for ceilings of any height as they’re planted into the ceiling itself as opposed to extending outward. As a result of their small size, you will need to have a handful of them across the ceiling to light up the entire room. This grants you a little extra agency in picking the layout of lighting in the bedroom. Since you’re not constrained to having a single centerpiece, you can choose exactly where the fixtures should go.

For example, if you don’t wish to have lights shining directly onto the bed, you can design the ceiling downlight layout to go around the bed as opposed to directly above it. A very important aspect of bedroom lighting is being able to have control over it; you can have the lights dimmed in the evenings when you need to relax, and bright in the mornings to help you wake up. Recessed fixtures give you that much-needed control of which areas need to be brighter or dimmer. Also, you can divide them into groups and control each group on its own. This also allows you to light up one specific area of the room, without flooding the entire room with light and risking waking up those still asleep.

How to Choose Bedroom Lighting

Some of the most attractive ceiling downlight ideas play around with the shapes of the ceiling. If it’s a trayed ceiling with a rectangular shape, you can have your lights outline this. If there’s a big circular centerpiece, you can place the fixtures all around the cylinder to make it contrast with the rest of the surface.

Skylights

Photo by Beazy on Unsplash

The epitome of environmentally friendly lighting and biophilic design, skylights are a valuable addition to any home’s roof that can accommodate it. They provide plenty of natural light, making your home more energy-efficient. You're also treated with a beautiful view at night if you live in an area with less light pollution. Even on cloudy days, skylights can light up an entire room, and the aura of the room evolves depending on the time of day. 

On bright, summer afternoons the bedroom is filled with warm yellow light, a softer, greyish hue on rainy days, and a beautiful tinge of orange during sunsets. When used in combination with conventional forms of lighting, skylights are a gorgeous addition to any bedroom. 

They’re simple, practical, and yet create a strikingly gorgeous atmosphere in the room, giving you more reason to work and study from home. Just make sure you speak with your contractor or roof tiler about having the right permits before installing skylights. 

LED Lighting

Ways to Incorporate LED Lights In the Bedroom

A great example of how modern interior design has greatly benefited through the constant development of technology is LED lighting. In terms of interior design, LED dominates in the area of colored (RGB) lighting.

You can add a lot of style and atmosphere to your bedroom with a few RGB LED bulbs. Place them towards the edges of the ceiling to give your interior design a light accent. They don’t need to be particularly bright — just potent enough that they’re able to complement the decor and style of your bedroom.

It’s no secret that LEDs are the more expensive lighting options available. This doesn’t mean the only bulbs available are designer ceiling LED lights. They’re only a bit pricier than fluorescents, coming in at around $10 per bulb in most online marketplaces. This slight increase in price, however, comes with many advantages.

Soft LED Lighting for Energy Efficiency In the Bedroom

Firstly, LED lights are very reliable. If no external damage impacts their quality, LED bulbs can last over a decade, even when used 12 hours a day. Their most important quality is that they are very energy efficient. This means that not only are LED bulbs environmentally friendly but will also result in a lower electricity bill. LED lighting is also quite easy to control. Many bulbs purchased through online marketplaces come with their own remote controls for you to adjust the light or even give them a breathing effect, which allows your lights to smoothly and slowly transition from darkness to light.

The Factors to Getting Good Lighting

Good lighting isn’t only about fixtures and designs. There are other important factors you should consider when planning the layout of your bedroom lighting. With a good amount of thought into lighting, you’ll create the precise atmosphere you need to relax.

Luminance 

Why even bother setting up stylish, state-of-the-art lighting in the bedroom if it’s not going to provide adequate lighting? Incorrect placement and installation of lighting may result in very limited luminance or inefficient disbursement of light throughout the room, even if the best quality fixtures and technology are being utilized.

How to Get Good Lighting

Good lighting needs to have good reach from pretty much anywhere in the bedroom. If it’s hindered in any way, you need to reconsider the type of lighting you’re using and how it works with the layout of the room. Try to make sure your lighting covers as much area as possible, which can be achieved even with the most affordable lighting fixtures as long as their placement is well thought out. 

If you’re having difficulty getting the right amount of luminosity in your bedroom, despite having tried several light fixtures and layouts, talk to a lighting expert for suggestions on what changes to make.

Comfort

Whether you prefer yellow, white, or multi-color RGB, the lighting in your bedroom must accommodate your comfort. More than any other room in the house, lighting in the bedroom should not cause any uneasiness or discomfort. Excessively bright lighting can disrupt your sleeping cycle even as you prepare for bed. By installing proper lighting that can be easily dimmed and controlled, getting ready for bed can even help program your body for sleep.

Why Lighting Is A Key Factor for Comfort

Do you like the gentle yellowish hue of old-fashioned light bulbs? Then you might enjoy stained fluorescents that come with the energy-saving traits of modern bulbs. Color plays a major role on your mood and the atmosphere you want to create. Getting some RGB LED strips to rig up along the ceiling will bring some extra color into your life. Make sure to choose the kind of lighting fixtures, layout, and design that will create the right, relaxing ambiance for you. 

Energy-Efficiency

A predominant feature in modern electrics and lighting is energy efficiency. With the slow, but steady transition to renewable resources, you’ll need to consider how energy efficient your bedroom is as well as the entire house. 

Put a little extra effort into future-proofing your home by investing in some energy-efficient lighting equipment. They’re not as expensive as you may initially believe and they will save you money in the long run. To have greater control over lighting and how much of it you’re using, we highly recommend having an electrician install a dimmer switch for you. This allows you to set the brightness at the exact level you want at any particular time. For example, if your home office is in the bedroom, you’d want it to be on full brightness. Whereas if you’re relaxing in the evening, but don’t wish to sit in complete darkness, you can dim the lights and save energy in the process.