In “7 Ways to Sell Your Home Fast,” we offered some home decorating advice to make your home look bigger and better. Number 3 suggested good lighting: let more natural light in and brighten up dark corners.

However, there’s more to `good lighting’ than this simplified piece of advice. So we decided to brighten up your day (ha, ha) and expand on the concept of using lighting in your home to help you sell real estate fast.

Let’s start with a definition of poor lighting. According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, insufficient lighting can be a health hazard: it can cause sleepiness, strained eyes, headaches and lead to accidents.

This all depends, of course, on what you’re doing and how much light you need to accomplish it.

Canada’s Style at Home magazine published a great article, “Achieve the Perfect Lighting” and they say to think about the primary function of each room, the mood you want to create, seating, focal points and colour schemes (remember: dark absorbs light and pale colours reflect). Next, consider different types of bulbs: their life expectancy and the amount and quality of light required.

LIGHTING:

General or ambient This type of lighting is overall illumination, which can come from one source or several within the room. It may be a good idea to add dimmers to lighting sources in multi-purpose rooms so that you can alter mood easily.

Task As the name suggests, it is task-oriented lighting or lighting that “illuminates workspaces”. Think reading lamps or bathroom vanity lighting.

Accent To create dramatic effects and highlight focal points within a room. This type of lighting is most widely used for presenting art. Styleathome.com suggests that to accent properly one should use three times the level of general lighting. Otherwise, too much will negate your intentions and wash out the room.

BULBS

Incandescent Old fashioned bulbs that are cheap and come in a wide variety of shapes and levels of light emissions.

Halogen These bulbs create a brighter, whiter light. They are more expensive than incandescents but last longer and can be dimmed.

Fluorescent Cannot be dimmed but lasts 10 times longer than incandescents, burn 5 times brighter and are more energy efficient.

So much to consider, where do you go from here? This is what styleathome.com’s lighting expert says:

“For a room with warm materials such as wood and terracotta, incandescent yellow or orange hues work well. With cooler tones, such as grey and blue, whiter halogens are a better choice as they render a room’s colours truer than incandescents and fluorescents. For energy efficiency, though, choose fluorescents, especially in areas that you tend to leave lights on, for example hallways, kitchens and laundry rooms…”

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