Lighting Ideas to brighten up your home

Good lighting is the quickest way to make your home feel warm, cheerful, and welcoming. In Ibiza, we are fortunate to enjoy long, bright days much of the year, so during winter when days are short and nights are long the lack of light can affect our mood and energy. 

Here are five lighting ideas to brighten your home.

Floor lamps

One of the easiest ways to brighten any room is to add some free-standing floor lamps. They fit unobtrusively in any corner and can be moved when necessary. We like the ones with multiple bulbs on flexible stalks; they are terrific for home offices because you can focus the light exactly where you need it.

Coloured fixtures

Take advantage of the mood-boosting properties of colour by renovating your lights with coloured fixtures. Simple, inexpensive paper or fabric shades on lamps or ceiling fittings can change the look and feel of a whole room. For winter, choose warm colours like yellow, orange or pink. In summer, swap for cooler hues of white, sea green, or sky blue. 

Anglepoise lamps

These lamps with adjustable arms are both incredibly practical and a design classic. They come in all sizes and shapes, but our favourite are small desktop versions. The flexible arm makes it easy to train the light exactly where you need it, whether on your book, keyboard, or project. They’re also handy as spot-lighting for cooking in dimly lit kitchens.

Track lighting

An issue with many Ibiza homes is the lack of overhead lights. Many country houses were built before electricity was common, and many apartments were designed mostly for summer use, so little attention was paid to good lighting. Track lights are an inexpensive, flexible way to make up for this shortfall. 

With track lighting, several bulbs are lined up on a pole or wire, giving you a lot of options about where to place the light and how you orient the light. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from straight rails, to curved fittings to circular arrangements, meaning you can find one to suit any room. They are great because you can change the overall effect by using different watt bulbs or shifting the direction of the fittings. 

Smart lighting

For total flexibility, you can choose a smart lighting system that will allow you to change elements such as brightness and temperature. It used to be that you installed dimmer lights, which was an involved process but now you can buy out-of-the-box solutions like the IKEA TRÅDFRI system. It is a wireless lighting package that allows you to turn the lights on and off, adjust the colour temperature, and brighten or dim the lights from anywhere in your home via remote control or an app.