How to Accentuate Your Interior Design with Lighting Control
Everything Looks Better in the Right Light
Photography is all about capturing an image that is a reflection of light. No matter the technology, from chemical film to today's digital, the ideal shot is seizing the moment when the light frames the subject perfectly, whether it's a colorful sunset or a Rembrandt-lit face.
Your home tends to be a reflection of your personality and sense of aesthetics. Finishes, furnishings, color choices, and artwork all form a mosaic of your sense of style and what matters to you. The way your eyes see it every day can change with the way light reflects off of these objects. With tunable fixtures and lighting control, you can enhance the beauty of your carefully curated Chicago, IL home every day. Read on to see how!
SEE ALSO: Why Lighting Control is the Best Interior Design Technology
Full Spectrum Lighting
To understand tunable lighting and its effects, it's important to understand full-spectrum lighting. Light can be referred to as "cool" and "warm" and is measured in Kelvin. At 4000K and above, light is cooler and brighter, with a large amount of blue light. At the other end of the range, 2000K and below, you will find candlelight. As you might guess, the bright bluish light is the light that energizes, like the sun at the height of the day, and the warmer redder glow of a sunset or candlelight is more relaxing.
But the way light affects our biological rhythms is only one part of full-spectrum lighting. The other is how it makes things look. Lutron Ketra tunable lighting is a full-spectrum lighting solution that can bring out detail and color in a way other lighting can't. Ketra has dubbed this Vibrancy, a method to carefully tune white light to reflect off an object in different ways. It's done by mixing color LED to create a wide spectral distribution of color in the white light. It sounds complicated, and the science is, but the results are not. With Vibrancy control, light makes color "pop" and surfaces detail that other lighting might mask – the texture of leather, the color in a still life artwork, and the grains of quality wood cabinetry.
Setting the Ambiance
We have discussed before the health benefits of tunable lighting and the way it affects mood and rest. Tunable lighting can set an overall ambiance, whether bright and energetic or relaxing and congenial. A critical feature of tunable lighting is warm dimming. This is the ability of the fixtures to create warm, natural light as the intensity is dimmed. While incandescent lighting did this well, not all modern LED lights do. We work with solutions from Ketra, DMF, Tech Lighting, and USAI because of their precise control of color content of white light, allowing you to set that warm glow for an intimate dinner or cocktails and conversation with just the right intensity and tone.
The other key aspect of tunable lighting is expertly blending with the day's light. During the day, you can harness the natural light that streams through windows and match its intensity and hue to bathe a room in natural light, from bright and bluer to warm and redder as the day wanes. This control helps your body adjust from energy and work to relaxation and rest and sets the mood in your home with how you perceive your interiors.
To learn more about how smart lighting control can enrich your environment, reach out to us at (630) 898-2850 or contact us here to get started – we look forward to working with you!
