Think about the largest room in your home, whether it’s your living room, your master bedroom, or your finished basement. You probably do all kinds of different activities there – watch TV, listen to music, read books, play games with your family, have coffee with friends – and you might find yourself adjusting the room’s lighting depending on your task. Maybe that’s partially because you can’t quite get enough direct focus to see your book’s text clearly or it’s too bright for a relaxing movie-thon.
With proper layers of light in your large room, you can quickly set your lights – whether your traditional recessed lights in your ceiling or decorative accent lights – to work best for whatever you’re doing. And with the below ideas for illuminating your large room, you can make it even easier to enjoy that nifty crafts project, super-focused read, or transcendent listening experience!
Why do you need large room lighting?
- Elevate your surroundings. Imagine you’ve set up the dream large room scenario, whether that’s a huge comfy couch or a big-screen TV, but the room still feels cold and uninviting. The right large room lighting setup can elevate the entire space and help you achieve the vibe you’re looking for.
- Set the mood. Similarly, the right fixtures can bring the finishing touches you need for the perfect surroundings. Consider a Sky Lite Galaxy Projector for a relaxing experience like no other, or dimming the bulbs to watch your favorite movie.
- Add personality. You’re not a dull person, so why would you spend time in a dull room? Transform your large room from boring to beautiful with a layered large room lighting approach. Unusual, attention-grabbing fixtures can show off your personality quirks more strongly than just plain old ceiling lights on their own.
- Illuminate the entire room. A single lamp in the corner simply won’t reach every corner of your large room. With a smart approach to illuminating your large room, you can flood any part of your room with ample, bright light at just the flick of a switch.
- Fit your needs. The right lighting is key to properly illuminating all the tasks you and your family do in a large room. A large lamp won’t be effective if you’re trying to read a book, and a task lamp won’t do the job if you need to illuminate the entire room. Fill your large room with the right mix of fixtures to avoid these issues and fit your activities to a T.
Eight large room lighting ideas
With these eight ideas for brightening up your large room, you can decorate, shine your space for reading or crafts, dim it for relaxation, or do pretty much anything else you want:
1. Colorful LEDs or lasers
When it comes to large room lighting ideas, your options go beyond the everyday white, off-white, or yellow color you’ve come to expect. Goodbye to predictable, blah colors; hello, a rainbow of choices!
To get the precise color you want for your large room, you have two main options: LED and laser variants. LEDs can shine in virtually any color on the rainbow, but lasers are brighter, more focused, and more entrancing. Our laser Ark Ambient Aurora Light offers a tranquil, nearly hypnotizing display of a green aurora gently bouncing within a blue nebula that spans your entire room.
2. Sculptural fixtures
In a big room, you might be tempted to mount art on your walls. What if you could do that and install lights in one fell swoop? That’s where sculptural lights come in. If your fixture is unusually shaped and looks like it belongs in a modern art museum, the fixture can be just as decorative as the light that emits from its bulbs. You’ll typically find that sculptural fixtures can be hung on the wall or installed overhead, but they’re not unheard of as table lamps or task lighting.
3. Accent lighting
Direct attention exactly where you want it! If you have sculptures, paintings, statues, or other objects that you want to be the center of attention in your large room, you need to make sure they all stand out. With accent fixtures, you can do exactly that. Install these lights along the sides of an art piece in your large room for an aesthetic touch that blends flawlessly into your interior design.
4. Transparent lighting
Transparent lighting is all about reflection -- and refraction. Transparent lighting is truly unique and stands apart from other types of chandeliers, lamps, and other fixtures. Surrounded by transparent panels made of glass, plastic, or a similar material, these objects amplify the sun’s rays and the colors that emit from the fixture’s bulbs. The result is pretty as a picture -- or more like a pattern lining your large room’s walls and ceiling.
5. Low-hanging fixtures
There’s nothing quite like a room with gorgeous high ceilings, but if your large room is long and not tall, you can still give the illusion of ample height using low-hanging fixtures. This special category of pendant light comes way down from your ceiling to within a few feet of a central furniture piece, such as a coffee table. Your long room will appear taller, and you’ll get accent and ambient lighting for your large space.
6. Floor lamps
You don’t always have to climb to your ceiling to give your large room its much-needed ambient light foundation. Start at ground level with floor lamps. These simple fixtures are at most a tad taller than you, and you just need to screw standard bulbs (or maybe one of our color laser BlissBulbs) into them to bring your large room to life. Try them out in a few different parts of your room – beautiful lighting design foundations rarely come so easy!
7. Task lights
A big room means many uses. You might have a reading corner, a seating area, a couch for watching TV, and a small table for arts and crafts. Give these areas their own task lights so whoever is setting there can do exactly what they came for: Gentle for reading, dim for TV, bright for crafting – the possibilities are endless!
8. Decorative lighting
With just the flick of a switch, you can turn your room from an everyday space into a setting where the lights are the decorations! BlissLights projectors and portable USB powered devices are especially great for this task: Our StarPort Laser USB, for example, flushes our room with a gentle array of stars. Similarly, our Christmas Tree Topper fills a huge room with holiday cheer, and our Sky Lite Laser Galaxy Projector spreads blue and green skies throughout. With lasers, you can simultaneously decorate and illuminate your giant room – and set just the right mood – with minimal effort.
