Bathroom lighting - design and requirements
Of all the areas in your home where light is important - that magic moment in front of the mirror when you check yourself and give yourself a wink and a smile before heading out into the world is one of our top priorities.
Most bathrooms - in brand new builds and older homes - seem to be lit with the overriding intent of making you look like you haven’t slept in 6 months ever time you look in the mirror.
Light coming from behind your head, or super strong lighting above your head throw Dark Shadows down your face, and generally mean you can’t actually see the details you’re looking for - like those stray hairs missed by the razor.
We always take the time to educate our clients during our consultation process, and have a variety of light effect setups in our studio - including the “perfect” mirror lighting for your bathroom! We welcomed the Melbourne Design Group in for a visit last year and all 20 interior designers queued up to experience that light for themselves - and every single one of them was blown away.
The notion of perfect mirror lighting is really quite simple - you need to have the light BETWEEN your face and the mirror to chase those shadows away and let you see yourself in all your glory! But how you achieve that is the bigger question.
MOUNT ELIZA PROJECT
When we’re designing a bathroom, we have a whole list of questions we run through to figure out what’s on the walls, if there’s a shaving cabinet with doors, a flush mirror, light sucking dark charcoal tiles… so many elements go into mix. Once we have our answers, we can work out exactly where that light needs to come from and so it will end up in the right place - between your face and your mirror - and also making sure we fill the room.
Recently, we were called to site to check over an installation, and our client mentioned that their mirror lighting wasn’t working as they’d imagined. So up we went and what we discovered is such a simple thing - but not something you could expect anyone but a lighting professional to know - the lights were aimed in the wrong direction.
Not for the room - they were aimed onto the tiles, which are a lovely feature and the room itself looked fantastic!
But look in the mirror and NADA! No light to the face. A short set of steps and our client’s approval is gained by redirecting those lights to illuminate her face like she’s on stage and hey presto, one step closer to experimenting with makeup (much to Dad’s dismay!).
SOUTH MELBOURNE PROJECT
Selecting the right light for your bathroom mirror is critical - and ultimately you can use just about any lighting technique - providing it’s in the right location - and most importantly - aimed at the thing you want to see! Your beautiful face.
If you want to light up the walls too that’s great - bathroom tiles are often dramatic, textured and stunning under light - just don’t ask your mirror lighting to do double duty. Add feature lighting to do its perfect job (draw your eyes to a beautiful feature) and you’ll have a bathroom worthy of the best 5 star hotel in the world.
MOUNT ELIZA PROJECT
NOW WE HAVE MADE IT SOUND SIMPLE - Put the light between your face and the mirror, however there are a few other things to take into consideration, which is LIGHT QUALITY….
and Light Quality comes down to four main things:
Colour Rendering (the ability of a light source to represent colours faithfully)
Consistency of White (that's the colour temperature - how warm or cool the light looks, and then how consistent that colour is across different lights)
Glare control (creating light without glare has always been a key focus for luminaire designers)
Efficiency - how much energy is used to create the light - and how much of the light created actually leaves the fitting and enters the room.
So fit the pieces of the puzzle all together by understanding LIGHT QUALITY just click HERE to read more.
For advice and design services, contact Mint Lighting Design today to discuss your project.
If you’d like to see your image have a correct and direct image credit, please contact us.
In Main Blog, Home Lighting Inspiration, Home Lighting Design Tags mirror lighting, lighting designer, home lighting, Home Lighting Design, lighting consultant, melbourne lighting, Made in Melbourne, LED, australia, bathroom lighting, experts in lighting, Bathroom, melbourne lighting design, australian lighting experts, lighting advice, melbourne lighting design expert