5 Ways How To Increase Natural Light in Your Home

Unless you’re a gothic character from one of Bram Stoker’s novels, you might not want to live in a home that’s cold, dark, and always filled with shadows. While adding artificial lighting can be a great way to brighten up dark spaces, nothing beats the significance of having natural light in your home. 

But what do you do if your home is low on natural light? Well, there’s a plethora of things that you can do to amplify the natural light in your house – or in other words – there’s definitely more to it than simply opening the curtains. 

With colors and simple placement tricks, you can make sure that your house is always light-filled. So, here are five tips that can go a long way in helping you get more natural light into your home.

1. Leveraging the Mirror Magic

Interior designers have forever been using mirrors to make rooms appear larger than they are. But did you know that they can also play an instrumental role in catching sunlight if they are angled properly? 

You can position them opposite windows and hallways to play with light and create a larger reflection. This will not only double the amount of light that enters your home but also add a heightened sense of space to your room.

You can add faucets and metal fixtures along with mirrors for enhanced lighting. Also, you can consider going for mirrored ceilings and walls but that can be very costly.

2. Using the Right Paint & Décor

While dark navy and brown tones may feel warm and cozy, they also absorb a lot of natural light that enters any room. This is why you should use lighter colors like grey, white, and cream, which can assist with a more even distribution of light by acting as a reflector. 

However, avoid using brilliant white paint on the walls as it can make your room feel cold. You can instead go for an off-white shade that will create a much warmer effect.

Another trick that you can apply for increased natural light to your home is painting your ceiling a couple of shades lighter than the walls – which will create the impression of space and height. But make sure that you apply a slightly lighter color on the ceiling if you have dark walls.

Also, there’s much more to lightening up colors, which goes beyond paint. It includes everything from your rugs and carpets to décor, even the color of your couch. As far as the flooring is concerned, brightening up the room could become really easy with polished wood, tile, or stone floors.

3. Cleaning the Windows

In case you have ever needed a bigger motivation to clean your windows, here it is – dirty and dusty windows can block a lot of sunlight from entering your room. Believe it or not but clean windows make your house look more inviting and aesthetically pleasing. Therefore, you must clean your windows regularly or hire window washers to do it for you.

Also, the kind of curtains that you use could play a key role in brightening up your room. Therefore, it is advisable to avoid dark curtains and go for lightweight and sheer fabrics. This would not only allow for better lighting in your home but also ensure that your privacy isn’t compromised.

Moreover, it is probably time for you to say goodbye to some of those large paintings hanging on the walls of your house. As sad as it may sound, your efforts at beautifying your home through large paintings inadvertently deprive it of the much-needed daylight as they absorb all the sunlight entering your room.

4. Keeping the Light Sources Unobstructed

Remove any clutter that’s preventing the light from entering your room. Think about how you have placed your furniture: is it in front of a window and blocking natural light from entering your house? If yes, maybe it’s time for you to reconsider your layout and place everything in a way that the light sources have unhindered access to your place.

If you have bookshelves at your place, place them perpendicularly against the wall of the room that has windows. This is done because when placed parallel, they block the passage of light into the room. Therefore, you need to think strategically while deciding where to place furniture that hinders the flow of light.

Also, apart from personal belongings, trees and shrubs around your house can also block access to natural light in your room. Therefore, make sure that you trim them on a regular basis to keep them from blocking light from entering your home.

5. Using Frosted Glass & Bi-Folding Doors

Another sure-shot way to increase the flow of light in your home is by using frosted or tinted glass for doors and windows. Frosted glass makes doors and windows translucent, thereby, allowing more sunlight entering into your home without compromising your privacy.

Also, installing bi-folding doors in your house can be another great way of increasing more light inside your home. Also known as sliding doors, these doors spread across an entire wall. Not only do they offer excellent views of your surroundings, but they also allow a lot of sunlight to enter your room.

Key Takeaways

Making some small modifications to your house could go a long way in increasing the amount of life entering your house. While you can also install skylights and French windows to your house, which will allow huge amounts of light into your home, they involve huge costs and are quite time-consuming too. 

However, increasing the flow of natural light to your home doesn’t have to cost a fortune. By applying some or all of the tips given above, you can ensure that daylight has better access to your house.

About The Author: Nikolay Nikolov is the owner of Winducks– a friendly window and house washing company. He loves what he does and his motto is to make the world a happier & cleaner place. 

 
Image by 영훈 박 from Pixabay