Find yourself squinting at a book, or perhaps feeling gloomy? Too often, staying in your home all day feels like living in a cave. With how many jobs can now be done remotely, it’s important to find ways to help your living space feel bright to promote happiness and productivity. If you’re wondering how you can brighten up your home, consider making a few of these small changes!
KEEP THINGS CLEAN
What’s so bad about dust? One of the biggest reasons a room looks dark and dingy is because of a lack of cleanliness. Clutter, dirt, and dust are all culprits of darkening a room, especially along walls and around windows. This kind of dirtiness often doesn’t fully get cleaned when people are doing a casual clean or pick-up either. Taking a bit of extra time to scrub your walls, clean the inside and outside glass of your windows, and windowsills, and put away and organize unneeded items from a room helps it feel bigger, brighter, and fresher. Considering this method requires little to no cost besides a bit of elbow grease, doing a deep clean is always a great option.
CHOOSE YOUR COLOR SCHEME LIGHTLY
What if your house is dusted, cleaned, and polished, but still feels like a cave? Your color scheme can greatly influence how bright or dark your home feels, so the problem may lie in the shades of your walls and furniture. Generally lighter, more pastel colors promote a brightening effect, but sharp, colorful accents can also help with this as well. How then do you choose a color scheme you like, but that will also reflect light around the room? Bright white isn’t always the best choice, especially if it doesn’t have natural light to reflect. Consider warm, neutral-toned colors like lavender, sunny yellow, bright orange, or powder blue!
LET NATURAL LIGHT IN
If you have to turn on the lights in a room even when it’s noon, it is suffering from a lack of natural light. There are multiple methods of improving natural light, such as removing blinds, and heavy curtains, or updating your windows altogether. High-quality windows improve the aesthetic without breaking the bank or affecting temperature control, so the benefits are well worth the cost. You can also encourage more natural light by making sure it is the focal point of the room. For example, you can put the largest piece of furniture underneath the window in rooms with one entrance, or pick out a low-key light fixture that only adds to the natural light instead of replacing it as the room’s focal point.
DESIGN ROOM SPACE
Especially for office spaces, where you place furniture matters. Designing your space so that light falls on work areas and places you sit greatly increases productivity and the usefulness of the room. Once your furniture is angled best to take advantage of a room’s natural light, you may think that is all there is to it, but there are more design choices to make. The interior design of the house should go past just spacing furniture. It also involves things like choosing brighter shades for your upholstery, rugs, window trim, and curtains. Adding mirrors and shiny objects that can reflect what light is already in the room is also part of it. Minimizing décor on the walls and picking flush or semi-flush mounts for your light fixtures are also ways to help promote light and a feeling of brightness.
CONSIDER YOUR WINDOWS
If a room feels like a dungeon no matter what things you take away or add, it may be time to consider more extreme solutions. For some rooms, adding a skylight is a great way to turn a dark corner into a bright, cheery space. Going so far as to replace some of your wall space with glass blocks in bigger rooms is a radical but highly effective option as well. If you do decide to widen or even add windows where there weren’t before, however, make sure to consider which wall and direction would get the most sun. Picking a more southern-facing wall to add a window to instead of an eastern wall, for instance, is just a wasted opportunity!
USE LED LIGHT BULBS
For the hours when there simply isn’t natural light to make use of, you still need to see. If you’re finding it difficult to navigate your home or accomplish tasks in the dimmer hours of evening and night, consider what light bulbs and fixtures you’re using. LED light bulbs are growing more popular for many reasons—they use less power, don’t overheat as easily, are good for the environment, and come in a variety of colors and dimming capabilities. Why that helps brighten your house more than other types of bulbs is simple: if you can control their brightness and color, you can better keep your house at the light level you need.
INTRODUCE BRIGHT SMELLS
Strangely enough, our visual senses are also affected by other senses, such as smell. One last way to give your house an air of brightness and freshness is by applying some kind of air freshener. Candles, diffusers, nebulizers, aerosol sprays, or just homemade aroma sprays using essential oils can all add this element to your house if you choose the right kinds of scents. The best scents to add freshness are agreed by the majority to be citrus, lavender, chamomile, pine needle, and peppermint, and are best positioned near doorways and entryways for the best effect. Perhaps because you are bringing natural scents into your home, the sunlight and sense of brightness one feels in the outdoors can greatly be influenced by aroma!
Whether you have to be inside all day or just want a cheery atmosphere in your home, bringing more light to your living space is a great idea. Not only does a brighter house boost mood, but it also promotes cleanliness and improves sleep! Try out one of these methods or make adjustments to get all the benefits a bright home can offer.
Make your bright home feel even brighter with a nice, deep cleaning! Schedule one with us by booking online.
