You can’t always rely on natural daylight to brighten your get-ready routine in the morning, nor your evening reading sessions, especially during the winter months. Luckily, with a bit of planning, you can devise the perfect lighting scheme to provide the illumination you need for your bedroom, day and night.

Planning Your Lighting Scheme 

Interior designers insist that a layered lighting scheme is the best bet for you to achieve both functional lighting and optimum atmosphere. Layered lighting requires you to employ a variation of lighting sources in one living space. In the bedroom, this could be a mixture of bedside lighting, wall lights, floor lamps and ceiling lights. Some of these fixtures are essential so that you can see what you’re doing, whilst others are there simply to provide mood lighting. This means that the ideal fixtures for your bedroom lighting scheme will depend on your desired results — where, and how, do you want your lighting to fall?

We’ve established what layered lighting means, now let’s get to the nitty-gritty. We’ll take a closer look at each type of light fixture in isolation to understand what they can do for your bedroom, which should enable you to answer the golden question above. 

Ceiling Lights 

Flush-Mount Ceiling Fixtures

Flush-mount ceiling lights are a popular bedroom centrepiece. They sit directly against the ceiling, saving precious space, and are usually characterised by a light bulb shaded by a plastic bowl-shaped cover or ornamental glass. This decorative covering adds some personality to your ceiling whilst concealing any glare. Flush-mount ceiling lights are ideal for small or medium-sized bedrooms, providing adequate light at ceiling level without overwhelming the room below. 

Semi-Flush-Mount Ceiling Fixtures

The semi flush mount ceiling light is similar to its counterpart described above, except this time the fixture hangs from a cord, which is often adjustable, and therefore establishes some distance between the light and the ceiling. We recommend you choose the semi-flush fixture for bedrooms with high ceilings, from roughly 10 feet upwards. This specific guideline gestures towards our general advice, that you should keep the size of any light fixture in proportion to the size of your bedroom. 

Pendant Lights

Pendant lighting describes a single light that hangs from the ceiling, often suspended by a cord or wire. With this in mind, you’d be best choosing pendant lighting for high ceilings so they don’t scrape the top of your furniture, or become an inevitable source of head-banging as you move around the room. They’re commonly styled in the centre of the room, but you could double up and fix a pendant above each bedside for symmetry.

Chandeliers

Chandeliers are the ultimate showstoppers, immediately enhancing a room with a touch of glamour. Exuding majesty and a grand, regal energy, we’d usually suggest choosing chandeliers for your larger living spaces that tend to be more populated, such as living rooms and dining rooms, so you can show them off. However, providing it’s to scale, a chandelier in the bedroom can be a private feature for you to enjoy. 

The general rule is that the lower you hang the chandelier in your bedroom, the larger it should be — but don’t go overboard! For a smaller bedroom, keep the chandelier to a maximum of 20 inches in diameter, and 30 inches for a larger bedroom.

Wall lights

Wall-hung bedside lighting

The demand for wall lights has had a resurgence in recent years, and here’s why. Not only do they allow you to navigate your home, accentuate localised spaces, and thicken the overall atmosphere, they can also be used as substitutes for alternative light sources, so you can still fulfil your lighting needs regardless of your space situation. If you don't have room for a bedside lamp, for example, consider choosing a wall hung lamp instead. This dark shaded number will cast a cosy glow over the bed at nighttime, providing just enough light to read a few pages of a book before nodding off.

Integrated Wall Lights

Perhaps the majority of space on your walls is already occupied by furniture or artworks, so you need a substitute for the wall-hung substitute mentioned above. That’s where integrated wall lights come in handy, the best space-savers we know. Compact in size, and available in a range of styles, you can slip these wall lights into your darkest spots for essential lighting.

Table Lamps

Is a bedroom truly a bedroom without a bedside table lamp? No one wants to be fumbling around for the main light switch on a midnight toilet trip, nor to attempt some shut-eye under a bright, startling central light fixture. Make life easier and a little more relaxing with a bedside table lamp, best when styled either side of the bed for symmetry.

Floor lamps 

We’ve worked from top to bottom, and last on our list for a fully-functioning bedroom lighting scheme is the trusty floor lamp. Sitting on your carpet like a lighthouse, this fixture stretches a broad glow over its surroundings. It’s a necessity for accent lighting, defining and enlivening the detail of nearby areas, but we’ll count it as task lighting, too, as it’ll contribute to the lighting you need for a bedtime read. As with the wall lights, you could even use these as bedside lighting themselves, if the tables next to your bed are scattered with other stuff. 

The size of your floor lamps depends on your available space, but if you’re blessed then go ahead and make a statement. We recommend our tripod floor lamp for those of you who are feeling bold. 

Now you’re aware of all the elements involved in bedroom lighting, you should have a clearer idea of what it is you need to get started. If you’ve established your lighting scheme but don’t know where’s best to find the fixtures that can bring it to life, take a look at houseof.com for inspiration. We’ve an extensive range of ceiling lights, wall lights, floor lamps and table lamps, the perfect additions to your modern bedrooms.