Sunday 27 August 2017

Tips For Proper Lighting For Your Home Office



















There are various reasons why you've decided to turn a part of your home into a space dedicated to work. For example, you may be working in a field where your entire activity takes place at home. Perhaps you are a freelance artist, a writer or a programmer. Or maybe, although most of your work is done elsewhere, you constantly work long hours. Some people can dedicate an entire room in their home to work and they set it up accordingly.

The many, however, have only one corner in the living room, the bedroom or the kitchen to dedicate to this purpose. Whatever the reason or the resources available, the organization of an work space inside your house, deserves to be treated with the utmost care. In furnishing and decorating your home office, one of the most important aspects to consider is providing adequate lighting. I would like to offer you some suggestions on this.

Before proceeding to some practical tips, I want to insist a bit on the reasons why you should pay a special attention to the lighting of this space. When it comes to lighting, interior design specialists make the difference between ambient lighting and task-focused lighting. Ambient lighting aims to provide a level of brightness that would be enough for the spatial orientation and for some general activities taking place in the room, such as walking, cleaning or eating. Also, ambient lighting gives a particular air or a certain atmosphere to the room. On the other hand, task-focused lighting aims to provide the light needed to achieve more targeted tasks, which usually require more visual attention, such as reading, computer work, etc.

In many rooms of your house, you already use both ambient light sources and task-centered lighting. For example, in the bedroom you might have a branch light,providing ambient light and also a lamp, turned on for reading before bedtime, providing task- focused lighting. If you think about creating a space for work, it’s most likely to be about an activity requiring high concentration. This means there’s a great chance
that ambient lighting won’t be enough and you’d need a special light source.

If you neglect this, the consequences can be quite serious. In the short term, insufficient illumination leads to attention problems, headaches or premature fatigue. In other words, the quality of your work would significantly decrease. In the long run, the consequences may be even more unpleasant, for visual acuity could be irreversibly affected.



Having said that, here are some aspects worth considering while planning the lighting of the working space. 

Take the best out of the natural light.
This aspect may even influence the place where you decide to arrange your work
space inside the house. First of all, make a review of all the available spaces in the house and analyze them from the point of view of the natural light sources. Take into account the intensity of the natural light but also its direction. For example, some specialists recommend that you point your desk facing north or south, so that the natural light doesn’t fall in different angles at different times of the day.

Secondly, it is important to consider the time of day when you are the most likely to work and the amount of light you have at those hours.
As you know, in Singapore, daylight lasts about twelve hours over a day. However, the number of bright sunshine hours is about four and a half (in November) and six and a half (in July), which means an average of about 5 and a half hours a day. For the rest of the day the sky is cloudy and there is much less light. This aspect is worth considering because it shows that the amount of natural light that you can use varies from one day to another or from one hour to the next. Under these circumstances, you could consider using multiple sources of illumination. For example, you could have a light source to activate when working at night, and natural light is missing absolutely and another source to use during cloudy days to boost natural light.

Third, you might need some strategies to reduce the intensity of natural light, at certain times.
The sun of Singapore is very shining. If the space you are using is facing south, for example, you might need some screens to reduce the amount of light to an optimum level, some days.

When choosing the light sources, think about the functionality of the space that you’re organizing. As noted above, your space might be quite small, meaning that you have to put every little corner to good use. First of all, the fittings should occupy as little space as possible. There are some modern designs that provide optimal lighting without consuming anything from the space you have at your disposal. For example, some fittings incorporated into the furniture pieces, allow the light to fall vertically on the work space. Another option could be a branch light hanging from the ceiling. If you want a more mobile, more flexible alternative, you can choose a lamp. For example, a floor lamp with a thin leg and a flexible head would allow you to change the angle from which the light falls, without taking much space.

There is one more aspect worth considering. If you look into the websites of some prestigious lighting products and services companies in Singapore, you notice that many offer some design and planning services. That means they are ready to assist you in choosing those lighting solutions that fit the best in your space.

Thirdly, the quality of light is also very important. If you use a computer, you have to take this into account when setting the lighting. For example, some specialists recommend that the light falls from one side of the computer, and not perpendicular to the screen and neither from behind.



With regard to the type of light source, you find at least three models on the Singapore market : the incandescent bulbs, the T-lamps and the LEDs. Some people prefer the incandescent bulbs because they are more shiny. The T-5 laps have the advantage of being cheap and long lasting. On the other hand, some people find the T- lamps tiresome because they don’t ignite at once, after a certain period of functioning they set to make a specific noise and they also have a cold light.

The LEDs use another
technology and have become more popular lately. They produce more light, in a wider range of colors and don’t make any noise. The LEDs also generate less heat, meaning that it takes less energy to the air conditioner for cooling them. It seems that more advantages add up in favor of the LEDs, but, ultimately, it remains a matter of preference.

What I want to emphasize is that considering all these aspects, you can make a more informed decision. Anyway, the lighting products companies from Singapore have very rich offers and it's worth examining it in detail.