Bathroom Light Fixture Guide

How To Choose The Bathroom Lighting Fixtures That Fit Your Home

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Choosing bathroom lighting fixtures can be a tough gig.  There are hundreds (thousands if you’re looking online) of choices, and they all are vaguely similar.  How do you choose the ones that work for not only the bathroom, but for your entire home?  This post is hopefully going to answer that question for you and help make it clear (or at least narrow it down) the choice that you should make.

Most homes have a “feel” or theme that permeates through every room.  This theme is a reflection of you and your family’s personalities that makes it not just your house, but your home.  Many homes have bathrooms that feel like you stepped into a strangers house and there is no continuity from the other rooms.  This is incredibly important to keep in mind when shopping for bathroom lighting fixtures, your bathroom should feel like every other room in your house.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what the theme is of your home, look at it like you’ve never been there before.  Look up, down, left, right and make a note of everything that you see.  There will be some common themes, or at the very least, common shapes and materials.  If many of the fixtures and bedroom table lamps in your home are silver, make note of that.  If round fixtures and lights are your thing, note that as well.  If your wall mounted shelves are of a modern look, make note of that.  These different qualities of the stuff in the rest of your home will help you determine what will go into your bathroom.

After you have an idea of your home’s theme, or at least common characteristics, write all of them down.  Those qualities are going to become your shopping checklist for your next bathroom light fixture.  You’re going to be looking at qualities like color, texture, shape, and material along with more abstract feelings like modern, contemporary, rustic, vintage, and even kitschy.

Take your list and narrow it down to five or six different things.  Those are now the qualities that you look for in your new light fixtures, and if it doesn’t fit your list it won’t fit in your home.

This technique, obviously, could be applied to anything that you put into your home.  Most people benefit from this little exercise when it comes to bathroom stuff because many people look at a bathroom like it’s just a place to take care of business, rather than an extension of the rest of the home.  Spend the extra few minutes to do this and you’ll find the perfect bathroom lighting fixture the first time you go shopping!

Dark Bathroom Lighting

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A dark bathroom feels like a forgotten dungeon, but luckily there are some simple steps that you can take to lighten it up.  It may surprise you to learn that it’s not your bathroom light fixtures that need to be upgraded first, but a few other things that I’ll discuss in this post.

Bathrooms can be dark for all sorts of reasons.  They may have poor lighting, dark paint on the walls, or just an overall dingy feeling that makes it feel dark.  It’s important that you tackle the dark “feel” before you tackle the actual lighting problem.  It’s cheaper than upgrading light fixtures, and may solve your problem completely.

Bright bathrooms don’t necessarily have more lights than dark bathrooms do, but what they have is a lot of reflection in the small space.  Light colored walls and spaces contribute to this.  If you rent your house/apartment there isn’t much you can do about the color of the walls, but you can change out some of the other stuff.  Dark colors absorb light and light ones reflect it, so take a look at things like your shower curtain and towels to see if their sucking the light out of your room.  Replace them with light colors like white or yellow to brighten the whole room up.

Cleaning your bathroom is important as well.  I’m not talking about wiping the pee off the toilet seat, I mean taking stuff off of the walls and really scrubbing it down.  That means the glass on the light fixture, the shower curtain rod,  and wiping down the walls.  In many older homes years of dust and shower grime add to the dark and dingy feel of a bathroom.

If you don’t have any luck with the first two steps, take a look at the actual lighting.  Try out halogen or tungsten lights instead of the regular incandescent ones.  These bulbs provide light that is closer to sunlight and will make the room feel brighter.  Before replacing the light fixtures, try replacing the glass on them.  These are called globes, and changing from a frosted to a clear on can make a huge difference.

Upgrading the light fixture should be the last thing that you do.  It costs more than the other steps, and is the most drastic.  Figuring out if a light fixture is going to be brighter than your current one shouldn’t be too tough, and a side by side comparison (or by memory) should do the trick.  Installing them is easy, just be sure to kill the power to the whole bathroom before playing with wires.  All you have to do is remove the old one and install the new one.

Getting rid of your dark bathroom lighting problem isn’t tough at all.  First, deal with what you already have and if that doesn’t work upgrade the lights!

Best Bathroom Lights For Make Up

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Choosing the right bathroom lights for doing your make up might seem like a difficult task, but when you understand the placement of vanity lights you’ll be well on your way to figuring it out.  The key lighting for things like putting on make up and shaving is balance.  Light that isn’t balanced will create harsh shadows that make the task difficult.  Also, the type of light that you use will have a major impact as well.  We’ll cover both of those topics in this post.

Balanced light from your bathroom vanity light fixtures is incredibly important.  Typically, the light shines from on top of the mirror (the vanity light), reflects from counter top and off of light colored walls and back to your face.  This creates some balance, but it’s certainly not ideal.  Think about a hair stylist station or a make up station and how the lights are positioned there.  They have equal light coming from all sides, leaving no shadows on the face.  While a huge setup like that isn’t practical for a home, there are some options.  Small spotlights can be easily installed on the sides of the mirror to help light shine onto the face, or dark walls can be painted a lighter color to brighten the entire room.

The light bulb type that you use is also important.  We all want to conserve energy and lower our utility bills, but tube and compact fluorescent lights (CFL) are terrible for bathroom lighting.  They create a yellow tone on the skin, which means that color of make up that you’re putting on in the mirror is a different color once you get out!  Instead, tungsten or halogen bulbs work great and create a very neutral and natural cast on the face.  These lights use less energy than regular incandescent bulbs and work better!

Another easy trick to getting the best results from these bulbs is to install a dimmer switch.  Most people will want a calmer light when they’re bathing or getting ready for bed, and a brighter one when putting on make up or plucking eye brows.  The dimmer switch will get you both of those and everything in between.

Getting your bathroom set up just the way that you want it is very important.  It helps make sure that your day begins and ends on the right note.  Take the time to get it just right and see what a big difference it can make in your life!

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