Bathroom Wall Lights With Style
Monday, January 11th, 2010The bathroom’s a funny old room, isn’t it – filled and fought over at peak times then sadly neglected for the rest of the day – perhaps that’s why bathroom lighting comes as an afterthought in many people’s interior dcor plans.
Ironically, the way you choose to illuminate your bathroom is probably more important than for any other room. In fact, poor bathroom lighting can set you off on the wrong foot for the rest of the day.
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?
And – worthy of a separate paragraph- make sure you understand the bathroom lighting regulations, which are, quite necessarily, strict on what lights you can have where. It’s been said before but it won’t hurt to say it again: water and electricity do not make good bedfellows!
In most modern bathrooms, which are, shall we say, bijoux, just placing wall lights around the mirror area will be enough to provide soft ambient light as well as exceptionally practical task lighting.
When it comes to tasks generally undertaken in the bathroom, for instance, putting on make-up or shaving, daylight spectrum light is best. For this reason, the best lamps for bathroom lighting are either halogen or LED, both of which emit light that is close to daylight. Having chosen the correct lamps, however, you need to ensure that you put them in the right place! Get it wrong and, next time you look in the mirror, you won’t like what you see.
Bathroom wall lights placed to either side and above the mirror will achieve much the same effect. The only exception to this is if you have an exceptionally large mirror, in which case you will need added light from a ceiling pendant.
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.
For real mood lighting, just add a few candles!
View our full bathroom wall light range


