Despite the fact that the bathroom is where most of us start and end our day, most of us seem to pay little heed to the way we light it.  For most people, bathroom lighting is something of a postscript to the rest of our interior decorating schemes; in fact, bathroom wall lights may be so low-down on your list of priorities that they fail to register at all! Such lack of foresight and planning is a huge mistake!  Imagine how much better you would feel emerging to greet your world from a bright, cheerful and, above all, functionally lit room.  Is it over-egging the pudding to say that the correct bathroom lighting can be life-changing?  Well, yes, probably but there is no doubt that a few well chosen bathroom wall lights will brighten your day.[DFR::ba29ece6-7a4d-beda-1eed-98ac9d2efe8a-2687-af|align_left_1]

Why wall mounted bathroom lights?  Because they offer the combination of ambience and functionality that every bathroom needs – what use is a bathroom that isn’t functional?  But, by the same token, who wants to spend more time than necessary in a room that’s starkly lit?

Before rushing out and buying those fabulous bathroom lights, however, you need to check out the European Bathroom Lighting Regulations.  These regulations specify what type of electrical equipment can be used in various areas of the room – all electrical equipment, including lighting, designed for bathroom use must be zone marked.  Make sure you choose your light fittings correctly.

One of the beauties of wall lights is the fact that for most modern bathrooms, which are on the small side, they will be all you need for both general and task lighting.  Link them to a dimmer switch and you’ll have mood lighting too.[DFR::59f1199d-e72e-fb30-2dd7-1bd8d41bb86f-2687-af|align_right_1]

For task lighting in particular, the closer you can get to ‘daylight coloured’ light the better; both halogen lamps and LED lights will help in this respect. The real secret to good bathroom task lighting though is the position of the lights. Get it wrong and you’ll see ugly shadows beneath your eyes when you look into the mirror – even if you don’t have any! To eliminate shadows, light needs to come from all directions and illuminate all the planes of your face equally; that is the theory behind those oh so glamorous movie star dressing room mirrors.

To eradicate deep etched shadows beneath your eyes (those cause by inadequate lighting, not those caused by a dubious lifestyle!) light must fall on your face from all directions.  To achieve this happy state of affairs you don’t need rows of dressing room lights surrounding your mirror, just site a wall light either side of the mirror, plus one more above the glass.  This grouping will be entirely adequate for a small to medium sized mirror.  If your mirror is very large, say, over 36 inches wide, you will need to add an overhead pendant light.

So, that’s the task lighting sorted; now to sort out the ambience.  By switching your bathroom light fittings separately you will achieve a truly versatile system.  For shaving or applying make up, just switch on the wall lights both above and beside the mirror but, when languishing in the bath, forget those side lights and just turn on the wall light above the mirror.  If you have a dimmer switch, which will need to be located outside of the bathroom, you can have the lights down nice and low too.

And, when its time for romance, just add candles.

Tags: bathroom wall light, bathroom wall lighting, Bathroom Wall Lights

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 7:03 am and is filed under Bathroom Wall Lights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.