Top tips for creating cosy winter lighting

Top tips for creating cosy winter lighting

Warm and cosy lighting can be a great help for our well-being. This is especially the case at the end of the day, after we have slogged away at work. To come back home and bask in a relaxing and peaceful ambience is key, and lighting plays a big part in this. By making some little changes to the way that your home is lit, you may serve to alter the mood of your living space for the better. One of the best times to get this right is during the colder months, when warm and cosy lighting helps us to feel comforted when it is darker and colder outside.

Colour temperature

One of the main things that this all hinges on is the colour temperature of the light. What you will want is a more red light, rather than a bluish hue. The reddish light instinctively puts us more at ease and relaxes us, and is something which we might associate with evenings around a warm fire. Blue light on the other hand might be linked in an evolutionary way to the early morning light, and so in the evenings a blue light will confuse our body, making it more difficult to chill out. This is why they say that it is always good to put the phone and the laptop away a good couple of hours before sleeping, as the blue light from the screen is not conducive to a restful mind.

A sample of different colour temperatures.

But how do we translate this into our home lighting? Well, one key factor in all of this is the type of bulb that you are using. Candles and match flames tend to burn at around 1700 to 1900 kelvins. This would be very low for a bulb, but it gives you an idea of the kind of zone that you will be looking to hit with your interior lighting too. By going for a lower range of kelvins, your lights will give the impression of soft, relaxing candles, rather than presenting a harsher light. When you are buying bulbs for warm lighting, look to get ones which are therefore at least below 3000k.

Spread the light

You should also think about lumens of the bulb. Lumens is a measure of the brightness rather than the colour. So, if you have a bulb which has a high lumens, it will be very bright, and this is not always the best way to create a relaxing and cosy atmosphere. What you will want to do instead is spread lower lumens bulbs around the space in a peaceful and often more characterful way. One method for example might be through the use of sconces, where they spread a low level of light around the room so that the whole room is lit but there is not one overpoweringly bright source dominating the space.

A wall-washer or 'sconce' light with frosted glass shade
A wall-washer or ‘sconce’ light with frosted glass shade. The Eglo 87328 from our collections.

Think about your shades

Once you have your bulbs sorted, you might want to think about how you can use the texture and the shape of your chosen lamp shades to make the light source more diffuse. Directing the light around the room in this way is much more cosy and generally flattering for the vibe of any interior than having a light focusing in one precise position. A bit of semi-opaque fabric or even some frosted glass shades on your sconces will do the trick to great effect.


Header image from Pexels.



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