Designing With Light – Azure Luxury Homes

 

When you’re on the verge of designing a new luxury home in Perth, it’s very easy to run away with the romance of colour schemes and choice of materials. Just one thing though, without the correct lighting design they won’t deliver the ‘wow factor’ that they should.

Designing with light is not about the shape of your fixtures or the lamps and shades that you choose, but rather the colour, placement and intensity of your lighting. That’s why today, Azure, the luxury boutique builders straight out of Perth, are putting the spotlight on their ultimate lighting design tips.

Colour Temperature

Colour temperature is the warmth or coolness of the globe’s light colour. A yellower light equals a warm colour temperature. This type of light is used for mood setting. A starker light (with a slightly blueish hue) sits at the cooler end of the spectrum and is great for working environments.

How you then choose a globe for a certain area of your home depends on the room’s use. Cooler lighting is perfect for areas that already receive natural light or zones where more detail-oriented tasks are performed. This would seem perfect for a kitchen but even there it’s possible to mix your colour temperatures to gain warmth in areas to highlight cabinetry and more direct, cool lighting for food prep and clean up.

Placement

Luxury builders like Azure know that clever lighting placement will accentuate a home’s features. It can make a small room seem bigger. It can relax a bedroom. In a work space, it can keep your senses focused and active.

Our fantastic four rules are:

• Layer your lighting and you transform a room. Downlights, lamps and wall lights all add interest.
• Don’t always assume the best position for a downlight is in the middle of the room.
• Be practical with placement. A light that’s too far behind you can render it useless when you’re at the sink or a mirror.
• Remember strip lighting. It can open up a benchtop and highlight walkways, bar areas and rebated ceilings.

Intensity

Our luxury home builders say that the final step in clever lighting design is the intensity, or brightness, of the light. This is where ambient, task and accent lighting complement each other.

Ambient lighting is used for general illumination and is seen as indirect and soft light. Too intense and you simply won’t be able to undo its effect, no matter what other lighting you employ.

Task lighting is intense light directed into a small area. You would use this sparingly and surround it with softer ambient lighting.

Accent lighting highlights something – like artwork or a textural floor surface. The intensity of the accent light is a pivotal ingredient. Remember, it isn’t the focus. It’s the link to the point of interest.

Put all of these elements of light together and you have a very powerful tool to transform a space. Want to see how the boutique builders at Azure Luxury Homes do it? Then we’d love you to contact us today to see some first-hand examples of outstanding designing with light.