1) Use yellow light in the living room to relax – Bright white lights that are closer to daylight have a slightly bluish tinge. They are great for workspaces but not generally advisable for places where you need to unwind or slow down at the end of a busy work day. Bright white daylight bulbs are great for increasing productivity and awareness, which are things you may want to focus in other parts of your house such as the kitchen, bathroom, or home office. In fact, with a space that’s already filled with neutral coloured upholstery and wall colors, using bright white bulbs just give it a just make it feel colder and more impersonal, almost like a corporate office or museum rather than someone’s home. If you try lighting the living room in a warmer type of light (with a yellowish hue), then it becomes easier for you and your guests to relax in this type of space and be able to disconnect from work as it has less of an industrial or office feel. Yellowish lights tend to make a space more comfortable and inviting, which is why hotel lobbies and restaurants use them a lot to help guests feel more at home.
2) Choose yellow light to make your space feel warm – Do you find yourself looking good in some spaces and not as great in some spaces (and sometimes looking older than your age in some cases)? That’s the light working with you or against you. My parents like installing white lights in our old house’s bedrooms. It gave everyone’s complexion a ghoulish tinge. Personally, it made me feel more anxious or depressed. They did have yellow lights in the living room and dining areas. These were the areas where everyone felt more relaxed and became the places where we wanted to hang out more. I hated my room because of those harsh white ceiling lights. I never realized that having a pair of bedside lamps with yellow-tinged bulbs on either side of the bed would make it feel warmer and more welcoming. White ceiling lights should be used sparingly. They’re very useful in factory settings or inside retail stores where it’s important to see what you’re doing and to help you see the merchandise that’s for sale. Lights that are on the 2200– 2700 Kelvin (K) range of the colour temperature scale are what are regarded as ‘warm’ lights as they are slightly more yellow. Once you hit 3000 K you start to have more cool or ‘whitish’ light which is what offices tend to have. 2200K lights have a soft amber glow and restaurants and hotel lobbies tend to favour them as they make people look and feel good. 2700 K lights are still yellowish and a bit whiter which is still considered warm but they’re a bit brighter. Hotel guest rooms typically have lighting that are 2700k or less so that guests can read while they’re relaxing or work on their laptops without straining their eyes. Next time you’re at a hardware store, make sure to check out their lighting displays to see how yellow or (white) each particular bulb is and then take a few home in varying degrees of brightness to test on your living room and bedside lamps just to see which level of illumination you prefer. Just keep in mind that warmer (i.e., yellow) lights are best for making people feel more relaxed and comfortable while white light is best reserved in places where you need to do work (i.e., your home office, garage workshop or storage room areas). Take a look below at how nice warm overhead yellow lights make people look as it casts a golden glow, making them seem more youthful and energetic.
3) Use yellow in your bedside to be able to relax and to read – Yellow lights are great in bedrooms to help us to unplug and relax. They’re also great for reading if you choose a soft light with 2,500 to 2,700 Kelvin (K). If you find that too dim – or your eyesight isn’t strong enough – you can try a light with 4,900 to 6,500 K which is really bright and allows you to read much easier. If you’re above 40 or especially 50 to 60 or older and struggle to read the small letters in some reading material, you may want to experiment with different bulbs. Used to be that I could read with lamps that had 1 warm yellow bulb that had around 2.5k to 3k K. Now I have to use a bedside lamp with not just one but TWO bright white lights that are 3 K each (for a total of 6 K) just to make it comfortable for me to see what I’m reading. But that’s only because my eyesight has been gradually getting weaker over the years. Originally when we bought this lamp, we were using 2 soft white bulbs that gave a subdued yellowish glow. And for the most part that’s what most people need, especially since a lot of people generally don’t work at night in their bedroom (although some do, I generally don’t recommend it as it can make it hard for you to fall asleep; better to keep do your work on a proper desk while you’re seated upright). They may do some casual or light reading and soft white (which is yellow tinged) is enough for that. But if you must wear reading glasses like I do, you may want to try putting stronger yellows or even a bright white light in case that makes reading a bit easier.
4) Use yellows in the dining room to stimulate conversation – How bright should you go for the dining room? Some people say that you should use bright white in the dining area to highlight the décor and the food. Although I find white to be ideal for working and prep areas like the kitchen where it makes perfect sense to see what you’re chopping and cooking, I find white to be a little too bright for the dining room. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that white can be a mood-killer for the dining area. If you think of restaurants for example, you’ll find that very few of them use bright white lights so that you can see what you’re eating. In fact the ones that may come to my mind that still use bright white lights are fast food restaurants. These places are focused on efficiency rather than comfort. Do you want your dining experience to be a fast and efficient one? Or do you want it to be one where people come together to relax and share some interesting stories as they enjoy each other’s company? If it’s getting together to relax and enjoy the meal, then you should definitely go with soft yellow lights. The problem with daylight or bright white lights is that it reveals every wrinkle, age spot, or skin imperfection that people in the room have and can make people look tired and haggard. Whereas yellow lights tend to bathe people in a soft glow and is good for making people look ageless and vibrant.
5) Use white lights in the bathroom – Is seeing your teeth, your hair, or your skin clearly as you do your daily grooming duties important to you? Women check out their skin and sometimes apply their makeup in front of a bathroom mirror. Men typically shave or apply some kind of hair product on their head before going anywhere. In other words, we really need to see what we’re doing and be able to closely inspect parts of our body that we’re applying some kind of skin or hair care product on. Generally, you need to have a bulb (or bubs) that are closer to daylight for this. Soft yellows sometimes aren’t powerful enough (which is why some people will use an array of them around a bathroom vanity mirror for example), but you can certainly use fewer but more powerful lights in your bathroom to be able to do what you need to do there. I typically recommend a vanity light fixture over the bathroom mirror (or medicine cabinet), and then several recessed ceiling lights for good measure. There should be at least one over the bathtub or shower and then 1 or 2 (or more depending on the size of your bathroom) scattered above the toilet and vanity area. I actually have a daylight fixture in the vanity and a soft white fixture over the shower (which is due for replacement) and I can see the difference in terms of brightness. The yellow looks nice but isn’t as bright. The white light over the vanity cabinet can feel a bit harsh if you’re not used to it but it does the job nicely of lighting that area whenever my wife or I am getting our faces (and the rest of our bodies) ready for the day. See how the bright white light in the photo below most closely resembles the natural bright white of sunlight and does a very good job of illuminating the room very clearly.
6) Use whites in your work areas for maximum productivity – Choose white light for productivity when you work – So how much light do we need at work? Are you happy with just a bright desk lamp? Or white compact fluorescent ceiling lamps? Or maybe a combination of both. I’ve tried the single lamp setup and the problem with that is that it just lights up my table but not the rest of the room, which remains dark. If I work under a ceiling light, I find it to be a bit too far from my desk, so it has to be super-bright to be effective. Except that sometimes feels too industrial (i.e., like I’m working at a factory) or too office-y. I want the feeling of working in an intimate space but feeling comfortably functional while doing it. I don’t want to make my house have a corporate feel to it (too impersonal) so my latest setup is I have a table lamp next to my laptop and a floor lamp five feet behind me right next to my daybed (I have a couch in my office not far from my work table). But I do have a third lighting source, which is a surface-mounted ceiling lamp – for when I want it to be a bit brighter, especially when there’s not enough natural light outside (usually during winter) and that just balances everything out. All the bulbs are bluish white as I have to be comfortably productive in my office but not TOO comfortable that I just want to lie down on the couch instead of work. White is the still best colour for a work environment while yellow is better suited for more informal/personal spaces.
