Wall Sconces or Table Lamps? Lighting Strategies to Elevate Your Space
Elevated design is about making your space uplifting and inspiring by rising above the design norms. We achieve elevated design when we combine the best of multiple styles in a way that makes each unique space a more motivating place to be. Lighting plays a vital role in elevated design, as light levels and reach have a profound impact on our sense of environment.
This year, designers are getting creative with how lighting is placed and sourced in each room. Wall sconces that provide an area glow or cast their light artfully back onto the wall are both rising in popularity, even supplanting the favored spot of the playful table lamp. If you are looking to elevate your space with creative lighting, let's explore some of the best ideas for wall sconces and table lamps this season.
Artful Integration with Bedside Reading Sconces
In most homes, the bedside reading lamp would be a modest table lamp with a simple conical shade. However, playful designers have been delving back into handcrafted headboards and artful reading sconces built on either side of the bed allowing a couple to comfortably read side-by-side or each choose their own light level.
These playful reading sconces might be arm lamps, industrial cage sconces, or charming conical lamps with matching shades. The style depends on how each person chooses to decorate their bedroom and the headboard that serves as a centerpiece and accent wall in one.
Arm Lamps in Multi-Purpose Office Spaces
Home offices are among the top items on everyone's renovation list, and have been for the past two years. While the first transitions focused just on making enough room for a desk and computer, now homeowners can get truly creative - and clever - with their home office designs. A wall-mounted arm light not only picks up one more footprint off your limited desk space, it is also versatile enough for a multi-purpose home office, crafting space, homework station, and repair shop - as many families' home offices have become.
Arm lamps usually articulate out along a horizontal plane. However, you can find wall-mounted arm lamps with a wide variety of arm designs including gas-spring arms, ball-joint arms, and arms with one or more joints. Don't forget that you can install several flexible wall sconces if your workspace extends along a wall or corner.
Sculptural Lamps Replace the Painted Vase
Where have the table lamps gone? Have no fear, the table lamp is now taking the place of the painted vase. As glowing decor rises in popularity, lamps are becoming a favorite home centerpiece on primary and secondary decorated surfaces. Choose a sculptural or statement table lamp - perhaps with rainbow or programmable hues - and set it in the place of your vase of flowers.
Fun with Symmetry and Wall-Mounted Lighting
We're also starting to see sconce lighting in unusual places - often in the celebration of symmetry. You may spot two colorful lamps flanking the fireplace, providing enough glow to safely operate a fire or enjoy illumination on days when a fire is not lit. Sconce lighting has often been used to frame doors, but what about bathtubs? Two sconces above a separate bath can elevate your layered bathroom lighting design by allowing the bather their own private pool of light in a place no table lamp would dare to go.
Look for spaces in your home that you can elevate with symmetrical sconces. You may have the perfect archway, breakfast nook, bay window, or even a crafting station that is well-centered and would look more inviting, illuminated and, uplifting with sconces to draw the eye to each space.
Light Up Your Artwork and Match the Frame
When you hang a painting, you want it bathed in soft light to increase it's visibility. While this has traditionally been done from above or below, we're seeing a rising trend in sconces that match the artwork's frame being used to flank and illuminate large works of art.
Flanking your artwork in sconces is a lovely way to illuminate the art, spread light through the room at intervals, and coordinate your light fixtures with the frames of each painting or print in your home.
Steampunk Pipe Lamps Emerge from the Walls
Steampunk - a unique brand of industrial design - focuses on connecting things with pipes, exposed bulbs, and cage light fixtures. If you are a steampunk enthusiast (or are designing for someone who is), sconce lights take a special turn. Pipes that extend from the walls and curl into exposed-bulb fixtures are a delight in the steampunk design trend, and can unify the eclectic look of steampunk home accessories. Brass, copper, and bronze are the best metals for steampunk design. To complete a steampunk room, apply a shabby-chic style patina of wear to metal finishes alongside neo-Victorian furniture and accents.
Illuminate Your Outdoor Living Space
Elevated design is also taking outdoor spaces by storm. Outdoor living has become a powerful trend in home renovation as people expand their living space with broad back doors, covered decks, outdoor kitchens, and protected spas. Often, this involves wiring more of your outdoors space than ever before. Why not elevate it with more lighting, as well?
Extend the welcoming beacon of your back porch light by lining your home's back wall with lanterns, or wrapping your powered outdoor kitchen with light where you need it most? Being able to see your loved ones, your meal, and your beautiful deck in the evening is one of the most uplifting sights of all.
Achieving Elevated Design in Your Home's Lighting
Everyone should strive for elevated design at home because you deserve for every room of your home to be uplifting. That starts with good lighting, and casting light exactly where it is most useful and/or inspiring in every room. Urban Ambiance can help you achieve this with a wide range of beautiful, creative, clever, and trending light fixtures.
Whether you are looking to design the perfect home office, bedroom, or outdoor kitchen, you will find the right wall sconces (and everything else) for your home's elevated re-design. Contact us today to consult on your stylistic best options.
