Bringing natural light into your home is always better than adding artificial lights. Natural light bathes the rooms in your home with a rich, full-spectrum hue that electric lightbulbs simply cannot duplicate. This natural lighting helps to increase the feel-good serotonin levels in your body. Plus, natural light is free of charge, unlike electric lights that contribute to your monthly power bills.
Many homes aren’t built with natural light in mind. Unfortunately, you can’t just pick up your house and turn it around to face the sun. However, there are some renovations that you can make to your home to help increase the amount of natural light that pours in.
If you’re looking to brighten your home and your mood, property expert Thomas Goodman at MyJobQuote.co.uk has some tips on how you can increase the amount of natural light in your home. Read on to find out everything you need to know.
Paint your eaves white
Eaves or soffits are the parts of the roof that overhang the rest of the property. They are either left as open eaves or they’re covered up using a horizontal soffit. Regardless of which type you have on your home, these roof sections reflect natural light into your home.
Painting your eaves white is a simple yet effective way to boost the amount of natural light that pours into your home, helping to light up every room in the house. Even if the colour of the outside of your house is different, you can still paint your eaves white. Since eaves are angled towards the house, painting them won’t affect your home’s kerb appeal. You will usually only see them from the inside of the house through a window.
Choose light and bright interior paints
Painting your walls and ceilings in light and bright colours is a very simple way to invite more light into the home. Your interior wall colour is the main way that you can reflect natural light back into a room. The Light Reflectance Value (LRV) can range from 100% for a pure, bright white all the way down to 0 for jet black. All of the colours in between will have various LRV levels depending on their brightness and shade.
White is the brightest colour that you can choose. If you’re not a big fan of bright white, but you still want to invite more light into your home, try opting for whites that include some other colour tones within them. White comes in a wide range of different shades.
Ceilings are also important. You’ve probably noticed that most ceilings in homes are white. There’s a good reason for this: white reflects light. Ceilings tend to go unnoticed in a room, so there’s really no reason to paint it any other colour than white. A flat white is better than glossy white for the ceiling, as matte finishes can help to reduce glare.
Choose gloss paints for walls
The higher the gloss level for your wall paints, the more light will reflect off the walls and into the room. More light will bounce off a wall painted with a high gloss paint than a wall painted with matte paint, even if it’s the same shade. Using glossy paints for your walls will give them a mirror-like effect, and everyone knows that mirrors reflect light.
Some people don’t like the appearance of glossy walls. However, gloss paints can be very helpful in reflecting more light into the room. Consider the colours that you like, and then see if a glossier version of that shade would work well in the room. If you have a particularly dark room in your home, gloss paints would be the best option. When choosing glossy paints, the only thing to consider is that there will be more glare bouncing off the wall from strong light, especially when it comes to artificial lighting.
Add some glass or reflective tiles
Glass tiles are a great option for bathrooms and the kitchen as they’re the next best thing to installing mirrors. In the right lighting, glass tiles will reflect almost 100% of the light that hits them back into the room.
If you’re not a fan of glass tiles, highly glossy ceramic tiles produce a similar kind of effect. Another option with great reflecting properties is a metallic splashback in the kitchen. Not only does this type of splashback reflect a lot of light into the room, but it’s also super trendy.
Replace any wall space with glass blocks
This isn’t always the easiest fix, but it’s definitely an effective one. Try replacing some sections of your exterior wall with glass blocks. This can help bring a lot of additional natural light into the home where there would otherwise be no light entering.
Glass blocks are not a structural replacement for wall stud systems. With this in mind, you’ll need to install headers over them, just as you would with a window or door installation.
Make use of mirrors
Mirrors are one of the most effective ways to reflect more light into a room. Mirrors are not only great for adding light, but they’re also highly decorative, very functional, and can help to make a room appear much larger.
Using mirrors in the right places can help to disperse and scatter any existing natural light that’s flowing into your home into other areas within the space around it. The perfect mirror in a good spot can help to illuminate an otherwise dark and gloomy space. If you have a room with some natural light but a dark corner, a well-placed mirror can help to ensure that the whole room is flooded with that natural light you crave.
The best place to hang a mirror in any room is the wall perpendicular to the window. Oversized mirrors are the best option for providing the maximum amount of light. Plus, these are also very appealing.
Add skylights in the ceiling
Skylights are a very effective way to pull natural light into the home. Skylights are often known as windows for the roof. Not only do these wonderful inventions add as much glazing area as a typical medium-sized window, but they also face right up towards the sun.
Skylights can bring in much more consistent light than a window as they’re less likely to become shadowed by things on the outside. Plus, any sunlight that is reflected in the clouds above comes right into your home.
Choose reflective room features
When natural sunlight reflects on things such as a chandelier, this amplifies the amount of light that fills the room. Plus, the chandelier doesn’t even need to be switched on for this effect to happen.
When considering decorative elements for your room, try to consider shiny, glossy, or reflective things. That way, you can reflect as much light as possible, instantly brightening the room.
Add a conservatory
Adding a conservatory to your home is the perfect way to invite much more light inside. Conservatory walls, roofs and doors tend to be made up of almost all glass. This means that the sun can come pouring in from all angles. Since conservatories are added onto the home, they’re also less likely to become shadowed by things outside – especially if your garden is facing the right way towards the sun through most of the day.
Conservatories are usually attached to the home with large French windows or something similar. This means that all of that natural light that’s pouring into the conservatory is pouring into other parts of your home as well. The larger the conservatory you install, the more natural light you can invite into your home.
Consider furniture shapes
When you’re considering adding some new furniture to your home, it’s important to consider whether or not this new piece will enhance the flow of light within that particular room. Bulky furniture can often block light and may cause shadows or dark patches within the room.
Choose pieces of furniture with exposed legs rather than bulky pieces, as this will allow more natural light to flow freely.
Work the windows
Since your windows are the main source of natural light within a home, it’s important to ensure that they bring in as much light as possible. Avoid allowing your windowsills to be taken over by clutter. You should avoid placing furniture, plants, or other accessories in front of the windows. This will help to ensure as much light as possible can get into the home without being blocked.
Also, consider your blinds and shutters. If you want a lot of light to come in through the windows, these should remain open or be completely removed for the optimal effect. You should carefully consider curtains as well. When choosing curtains, go for ones made up of light materials that will allow light to flow in freely. Hang your curtains above the window and ensure they can be opened fully so that there is no overlap over the window.
Another option you may want to consider is sheer curtains. These will provide you with a degree of privacy but will also allow natural light to pass through into the room, creating a soft, filtered kind of lighting. In rooms where privacy isn’t needed, it’s always best to go for a naked window.