Six Tips For Making The Most Of Your Natural Lighting

Knowing how to utilize natural lighting effectively for your home not only brightens your rooms, but also could lead to saving money on your energy bills.

You may think that to increase the amount of sunlight that comes into your home that you must perform a major, expensive remodel on your house, and in most cases, this is just not true. Below, we share seven affordable ways you can make the most of natural lighting in your house.

Replace solid doors with glass-paneled ones

Start by letting more light in the same way everything else comes in – through the door. Glass-paneled doors will let in additional light and come in a variety of styles.

If privacy is a concern, you can install styles that contain frosted glass. This type of glass allows light to come in without people being able to view every detail in your house from the street.

Add more mirrors to bounce light around

Mirrors on the walls will reflect light back into the room, unlike other types of decorative, wall elements, so mix in a few mirrors in between photos and artwork to reflect sunlight into the room.

Many homeowners even install an entire wall of mirrors, although this is obviously a much larger undertaking.

Let the light flow through the windows

Instead of heavy, room-darkening drapes, you should hang lightweight transparent curtains or drapes. Transparent fabrics will allow the sunlight to flow into the room, even when you close them.

If there are times that you need to block out the sunlight for one reason or another, add a shade on the windows so you do not block the natural light all the time.

Open the curtains or drapes all the way whenever possible during the day or even when the moon is bright at night. Only close them when you need the privacy.

Get rid of obstructions

Remove objects and plants that could block light from coming through your windows or doors. Trim tree branches, prune shrubs, or transplant plants into other areas of the yard to open the exterior of the house up sufficiently for the natural light to enter into your home.

If you have tall vases of flowers sitting in your windows, swap them out for shorter pots of plants so the sunlight can come into the house.

Consider adding a skylight

If the architecture of your house allows, skylights are a nice addition to bring that sunlight into a room.

Skylights work with high, low, and slanted ceilings. You can even install them on your own with kits from your local home improvement store.

Paint the walls with lighter colors

Dark colors absorb light rather than reflect it. Paint walls and ceilings in light colors to enable them to reflect the natural light that shines on them.

White is ideal for ceilings while beige, cream, tan and pale pink are some examples of light tones of paint for the walls that will keep them reflective in nature.

Let the sunshine into your home to illuminate and warm the rooms through utilizing the above methods. As time goes on, you will realize that natural lighting boosts your mood, enhances your home and decreases your electric bill!

Analyze your home today to discover which tips you need to enact to increase your house’s natural lighting.