Light is one of the most important, yet understated things in our daily lives.  Light helps form events, and memories….the sunny day at the lake, the marriage proposal by candlelight, the ghost stories told by the late night campfire.  Scientific studies have shown that the appropriate and proper lighting affect our daily moods.  Can you imagine living in a world with no lights ?  How would that affect your daily life ?

 

Thankfully, we have access to great lighting….which means we have lots of options  !  You can use lighting in so many ways to enhance you life, and your home…to make life tasks easier, to strengthen and highlight the structural features of your home, to provide warmth to the environment where you spend your quiet time.

 

There are four basic types of lighting that can, and should be used to achieve the best lighting design.  They are: ambient lighting, task lighting, accent lighting, and decorative lighting.

 

 

Over the last few years, one of the most frequently asked questions is: how high should I hang my pictures ??  Most often people hang their pictures or art too high.  The often- repeated rule of thumb is that the horizontal centerline of a picture should be at eye level.  This is not particularly helpful advice since people do vary in height, but the average-size person should be able to look comfortably at a framed piece without having to either bend down or look up.  Pictures or art hung in the home often must be placed over furniture and therefore need to be hung higher than eye level, but you should try to get most of your pieces down where family and guests can enjoy them.

 

Another question I’ve had is: whats the best way to go about hanging a group of pictures ?  A wonderful way to think about a doing this is to treat them as one large picture made of movable interior elements.  First you want to determine the overall size of your imaginary rectangle on your wall that you want to fill and then experiment moving around the individual pieces within the rectangle until you arrive at an arrangement that is pleasing to you.  You can do this by laying all the art pieces or pictures out on the floor and trying out various combinations within your imaginary rectangle before putting that first hanger, hook or nail in your wall.