how to decorate your home using focal points and light

When considering how to decorate their homes or apartments, most people think about paint colors, furniture, and decoration styles. Very often the dramatic impact that a choice of lighting can have on a room is overlooked. Even more often the impact of using focal points is completely ignored.

I am so excited because this has come very helpful when we purchased our new home and started from scratch on everything.  Trying to put together where pictures and art and things would go in our home was difficult. I really never thought of a focal point and lighting with decorating.

Many homes and apartments come with small, cramped, dark rooms. The usual advice given is to use a lot of light colors, install bright lights, and try not to cram too much furniture into the space. Well, perhaps it is true that white ceilings make a room look bigger. One clever approach to both making a cramped room look bigger and improve the lighting is to use mirrors. Placing mirrors to catch any possible light and reflect it into and around the room will automatically make the room lighter and seem larger and airier.

Another tactic to make a small room seem bigger is to create a focal point with lighting. Simply putting in a lot of indoor lighting in a white-painted room just makes the room seem garish and stark, not bigger. If, however, a dramatic focal point is created in the room, the eyes will be drawn to the focal point and the rest of the room will seem larger. Placing elegant wall sconces at eye level to highlight a lovely piece of furniture or mounting a spotlight to light a piece of beautiful art is an easy way to create a focal point.

In his famous New York apartment, Steve Wynn created a focal point out of a staircase. The eye-catching piece is made out of sculpted glass and ebony-colored wood. It manages to create a focal point in both the lower and upper stories, drawing the eye. Since it’s a staircase made mostly out of clear material, it also creates an illusion of a huge space, making the apartment seem to double in size.

Admittedly, not everyone owns a home that contains a staircase that can be turned into an eye-catching sculpture. However, most homes do contain windows. Installing bay windows or entire walls of glass is a great way to make a room seem much larger than it is. If the view is not exactly spectacular, obscure it with plants. A garden window full of greenery combined with mirrors and a strategically placed spotlight can turn even the dimmest, darkest room with a view of a brick wall into an illusion of an outdoor garden. Another option to obscure a less-than-inspiring view is to install a huge fish tank right in front of the window. The light can pass through the tank, but the eye will be drawn to the fish and plants in the tank rather than what is beyond the window.

If the outdoors cannot readily be accessed, use art. Beautiful pieces strategically placed can act as focal points. Lovely landscapes lit with spotlights can bring the outdoors in, and make a room seem less cramped. In the New York apartment mentioned above, in addition to the staircase, pieces of artwork act as additional focal points throughout the various rooms. The lighting is designed to highlight the artwork, turning a mundane room into an exotic setting.

What are your thoughts? Did you think about lighting and using a focal point when decorating your home?