Your living room is the first thing that everyone notices about your home interiors. Therefore, your furniture needs to really stand out here. However, with a change in trends, the kind of lighting fixtures used to glow up the space has also become an important consideration today.

Good lighting is something that can turn an ordinary living room into extraordinary. It helps set the right vibes and make the most social area of your home truly warm and inviting. Given below are a few ideas in which you can effectively light up your living room and make it a masterpiece that everyone admires.

• Make a Statement

If you want your living room to look mesmerising without being confusing, deciding on a centerpiece source of lighting is necessary. If there are too many centrepieces however, the viewer can get muddled with the focal point. Therefore, supporting the one statement light along with other subtler sources can help lift up your space. Usually, modern pendant lighting can help achieve this. A large geometric pendant light or a chandelier can make a statement like no other. Alternatively, an oversized lamp or structural wall sconce can also make for the perfect statement piece when accompanied by smaller fixtures and pendants.

By Living’s chandelier diamond cage pendant light in Australia is a great example of a living room centerpiece. Another example for a mid-century look is 3 Lindsey Bubble Chandelier having three bulbs covered by black glasses and asymmetrical, gold painted, metal branches.

• Highlight Corners

Dark corners can lead to instances where certain accent pieces remain invisible in your interiors. Moreover, certain corners when lit up can make for great reading nooks. It is therefore beneficial to highlight these. A table lamp or an overhead fixture can help greatly in doing this and set apart your living room appearance.

• Let Your Accents Stand Out

There are certain elements in your living room, such as potted plants, fireplace, a lovely showpiece and so on, that increase the charm of the space. Such elements are called accents. These need to be brought out in order to make the room interesting and layered. Recessed wall lighting behind decorated shelves, overhead table lamps or pendants over dark corners and candlelights or small table lamps over a fireplace are some things that can help. You can also use fairy lights to light up accent pieces by wrapping them around paintings, spiral structures, walls, tables and more.

• Focus on the Ambience

The living room ambience is extremely important. It can be romantic and intimate or bright and sociable depending on the mood. Dimmers and light control systems help greatly with customising your living room ambience as per occasion. 

• Play with Levels and Layers

 When it comes to lighting, take care that every level is lit up. Use modern pendant lighting on ceilings, wall sconces at the eye level, table lamps right below the eye level and lastly floor lights. Apart from this, it is always beneficial to light up your home with layers of different lighting fixtures instead of just one. This adds depth to your living room lighting and keeps your interiors from appearing dark.

• Make Your Light the Art

Sometimes instead of using paintings on the wall, wall lights can act as masterpieces. Oversized artistic fixtures are quite popular and are both functional and decorative. For example, By Living’s movie wall light is an artistic piece all by itself. A series of these placed asymmetrically on the wall can create an industrial masterpiece like no other.

• Match Imperfectly

Having an identical pair of lights is not necessary. You can create intricacy by pairing different lighting fixtures that match with the overall design. For example, in case of a contemporary style home with wooden centre table, By Living’s Leather timber table lamp on one side of the sofa can be paired with our popular pendant light in Australia, Vertical timber concrete pendant light on the other side.

• Complement with Daylight

Sometimes your interiors may have large windows or skylights that allow a large inflow of daylight. In this case, using a transparent chandelier  is a great choice as this will reflect the natural light instead of blocking it out. You can thereby maximise your living room space with sun lit furniture.

• Mix Ancient and Modern Lighting

Another thing you can do to create welcoming living room interiors is mix traditional lighting fixtures with contemporary ones. You can pair a victorian chandelier with modernist table lamps or wall lights. Apart from this you can pair modern pendant lighting with an antique baroque lamp or wall sconce. Pairing contemporary lighting with traditional moroccan lamps is also quite popular.

• Let Low-hanging Fixtures Take the Spotlight

Low hanging fixtures over the living room table or the dining table is both functional and ambient. It creates an inviting atmosphere by highlighting the food or decorations kept on the table. This makes your living room a social haven. Besides, it also provides task lighting that is needed when you eat or play on these tables.

All the above proves that a mixture of all three, ambient, accent and task lighting is needed in the living room. These are nonetheless just a few ideas and not rules of thumb. You can experiment with lighting depending on the overall look of your living room.

Looking for high-quality, designer lighting fixtures? By Living provides wall lights, table lamps, floor lights, globes and pendant lights in Australia for affordable pieces. Browse our collection and order one right away.