Picture Lighting

Pictures say a thousand words and can evoke a series of emotions. That is probably the reason why we always want to surround ourselves with picture of loved ones in our homes. If you have a family portrait as the focal wall décor in your living room, you definitely need some great picture lighting ideas on how to best draw all eyes to the picture the minute your guest steps into the room. Most of the time, the harshness of the overhead light may be a little too severe to create a visual impact on your pictures. With some proper picture lighting techniques, you can highlight your frames and add a touch of drama in order to create the best impression possible.

Keep in mind that light and colors are two independent mediums but you can be able to blend the two elements seamlessly to get the best results. Generally, the stimuli caused by light to the retina can help us perceive every color on the picture better, and our own perception is unwittingly affected by the quality of the picture light. For that reason alone, you need to pay a more careful attention to your picture lighting if you want to enhance the beauty of the pictures on the walls.

Among the well-known picture lights used nowadays are the low voltage halogen lights that are usually mounted on the walls under or above a picture or painting. However, a lot of people often make the mistake of not paying careful attention to the color of the lights they purchase. The proper thing to go about selecting picture lighting colors is to carefully take a look at the dominant colors of your portraits. There are different colors of that can best complement and flatter this. Take for example, incandescent bulbs are best used to enhance shades of yellows, oranges and reds. Some clear halogen lights can effectively showcase intense colors in the pictures and can be a very good choice if you want to have that vivid and multi-colored effect.

If you have a group of pictures in one wall, the best lighting treatment to use is to actually light every picture individually rather than to rely on one specific light to brighten up everything. You can achieve even illumination if you will space the pictures evenly too and use spread lens or some beam elongator for a smoother looking units of pictures lined up on the wall. Such approach can also be used for lighting large frames.

However, if you can a single medium size picture frame, it would be best to install to light to reach the picture at a 30-degree angle from a vertical direction. Since if you will place the picture lighting a little farther it may ultimately cause the beam of the light to be a little too low on the wall If the lights are placed a little too close on the picture, it may create some shadows on the frame, which you naturally would not want to mar the beauty of your pictures.

Awhen it come sto the fistures of your lights, there are a great number of deigns that you can possibly choose from to suit the existing theme of your room. If you are into contemporary home décor, then you probably get lost on the jungle of modern light fittings that you can choose from. If you want to retain the Old World charm, there are also a plethora of traditional deigns of wall lighting that you can choose from to light your wall. Recessed lighting systems are also a great alternative for picture lighting since it unobtrusively provide luminance without competing with the visual impact of the photographs.

So have your family portrait framed and hanged on the wall for all to see and admire. At set it perfectly of with great picture lighting techniques to a little more dramatic effect.