Many homeowners are looking for ways to save with their home lighting without having to cut down on their quality light fixtures or other lighting choices. One consideration is the use of daylighting. Of course, before incorporating daylighting into your home lighting scheme, you’ll want to look into the pros and cons.
What is Daylighting?
Before you can consider adding daylighting to your space, you’ll need to know what exactly it is. Daylighting is an environmentally responsible way of lighting a space without the use of artificial lighting (light fixtures) during the day during peak lighting hours, depending on the individual building and what way the windows face. For example, north facing homes will get a decent amount of even lighting throughout the day. Meanwhile, an east facing home will get more daylight during the morning hours and less daylight during the evening hours as the sun sets.
Advantages of Daylighting
The biggest advantage of using daylighting rather than light fixtures during the day is that it will noticeably cut down on your electricity bill. In fact, it’s estimated that your overall bill can drop anywhere from 15 to 40 percent, which can be a huge benefit for homeowners on a budget.
Daylighting can also help cut down on cooling costs in the summer, if properly controlled. When you work with a trained professional to create a daylighting scheme, mention that you’d like to also keep your cooling costs low in the summer. Proper daylighting will produce less heat than using light fixtures such as ceiling lights, table lamps and so forth. Though the savings may be small, they can add up over time.
Disadvantages of Daylighting
As expected, there are also some disadvantages of daylighting. To start, working with a daylighting professional is an absolute must, as they have an understanding of how the light works not only in a specific environment, but how it changes throughout the year due the tilt of the earth’s access, daylight savings and so forth.
Secondly, daylighting requires the installation not of new light fixtures, but often of new windows including skylights, tubular skylights and so forth. Overall, daylighting can be costly upfront; though it typically pays for itself after a few (to several) years, depending on the initial costs.
It is worth noting that daylighting also requires high quality windows that control the amount of sunlight and heat that passes into the home; which is how daylighting helps to control the home’s cooling costs in the summer. Light fixtures produce additional heat, but so does sunlight if not properly accounted for and this can all raise the costs of cooling a home.
Daylighting can have many pros and cons, but it’s important to weigh these thoroughly before considering adding daylighting to your home. While it can save money, it can be costly upfront. It also requires the help of a professional who understands the fundamentals of daylighting and artificial lighting with light fixtures. However, for many people, the long term benefits may outweigh the initial disadvantages.
Meanwhile, mood lighting can include the use of colored lights to help give a certain ambience in the space. For example, light fixtures that use colored LED lighting that changes during the day can be extremely beneficial. Red can be used during the evening for a more romantic feel, while blue lights can be used to create a more calm atmosphere.
Lighting the bedroom properly is important, as it’s your sanctuary in the home. Remember, you can easily invest in certain trends, including drum shades or wall sconces, as they tend to wax and wane in popularity, making them easy to keep around as they’ll always come back into style.