Even ordinary white light comes in a wide range of tints and temperatures that change how your clothing and cosmetics appear in different settings. You’ll immediately see that different light bulbs and lamps emit a distinctly different tint that is either warmer or colder.
The same notion is true regarding the rooms in your home. How bright your home lighting should be depends on where you are, so let’s review each room of most folk’s homes.
Bathroom
Stores play this mean trick where they use bright lighting to their advantage. Often, the items you try on there make you look like a million bucks, leading to confusion and disgust when you check yourself out in your bathroom mirror.
While you don’t want to pull any tricks off the department store, your bathroom should be the most illuminated room in the house. The sweet spot for bathroom lighting is 25 lumens per square foot—7,000-8,000 lumens total. Some areas need more, while others require fewer lumens. 40-50 lumens are best for putting on makeup or shaving your face, while accent and ambient lighting only need half of that.
Kitchen & Surrounding Area
Kitching lighting is a bit of a mixed bag. More lighting is necessary for the work areas where you cut meat and prepare a meal. Having as much brightness in those areas as in your bathroom is not a stretch. However, you don’t want that throughout the kitchen. 3,000-4,000 lumens are all you need for sitting areas.
Home Office
The number of lumens needed to illuminate a home office adequately will vary depending on the size of the space. Lighting professionals recommend between 50 and 55 lumens per square foot for any area where concentration is essential.
Therefore, increase the total square feet of office space by 50 to get the needed brightness. The result is the number of lumens required to adequately light a typical home office. Ultimately, you want to see what you’re doing without needing sunglasses, and 6,000-8,000 lumens accomplishes that.
Living & Dining Room
The living room is a place for relaxation after a long, arduous day. Because of that, you don’t want to employ overly bright lights. Instead, opting for 40 to 50 per square foot and a 2,000-lumen maximum creates the ideal ambiance for a perfect night on the couch with a bowl of your favorite ice cream.
On the other hand, your dining room should be a skosh brighter—3,000-4,000 lumens, to be specific. Despite what restaurant lighting tells us, eating in the dark isn’t the best experience.
Bedroom
Sleeping is the primary purpose of everyone’s bedroom, and it’s hard to sleep well if you’re surrounded by bright lights. Two thousand lumens are more than enough to provide bedroom lighting, but 1,000 lumens are sufficient for zonking out when the time is right.
Learning how bright your home lighting should be helps you create cohesiveness for each room. Adding LED Edison light bulbs from Stylighting ensures you get the lumens necessary to outfit your home. With our high-quality bulbs, you can expect years of top-tier illumination that you can count on.