Indoor Home Lighting Ideas

Ideas for attractive home indoor lighting.

There is no evidence that lighting was treated as a decorative value prior to the seventeenth century, when candelabra were first used. Its decorative application is modern. For the purpose of this work we are concerned almost exclusively with the adaptation of old designs, chandeliers, sconces, torcheres, candlesticks and lamps, and entirely modern developments, such as concealed lighting, cornice lamps, and indirect lighting from hanging bowls.

Gas lighting has decided limitations, so has acetylene, but electric light offers comfort and convenience, and its supreme advantage is that practically any fitting can be wired and provided with lamps and candles. This means that we are able to use a great number of beautiful designs which were originally made for wax candles and which lose none of their grace or beauty by being adapted for electric light.

The planning of electric light points in a house is seldom done well. In a small house a firm decision has been reached by someone - nobody knows who - about the position of light points. One to each room is the rule, and that must be in the centre of the ceiling. However low the ceiling, or however small the room, provision must be made for a chandelier to be hung, and as prospective occupiers are seldom allowed into a house until all the electrical work is completed, there is little chance of inducing the builder or the landlord to institute wiring that would possess some elements of sanity.

The best way to wire any room for electric light is to have at least three plugs in the skirting, so that lamps may be placed in various parts of the room. Points should be run either side of the mantelpiece, so that a pair of wall lights could be used if desired. If the size of the room warrants it a point may be run for a chandelier, but it is absurd and tyrannical to condemn anyone other than a dwarf to live in a low-ceilinged room accompanied by a chandelier.

Having settled the position of the light points, the question of the type of fitting to be used arises. We are not dealing with fittings in their historical order, but for the sake of clearness we may divide them into three sections : wall lights, standards, including vases and candlesticks, and suspended lights.