1. A ceiling pendant, such as a chandelier, not only looks great in a bedroom but its multi-directional illumination can fill every corner of a room. Bedroom lighting needs to be bright sometimes – even if it’s only for cleaning.
2. Unless a bedroom suffers from a light pollution, such as a lamp post right outside, it makes sense to ensure that people don’t have to walk across the room in the pitch dark. Bedside lighting of some sort can be handy but two/three-way light switches are the most convenient.
3. Bedside table lamps can take up a lot of space on bedside tables – free up space by using bedside wall lights, or for a more unusual look, bedside pendants.
4. If you plan to use a 5A lamp circuit in a bedroom for bedside table lamps then you run the risk of people waking each other up if they go to bed or get up at different times. If one person switches the 5A circuit on they may wake up the other person who has a bright lamp on right near their face! I tend to use three 5A circuits in a bedroom – one each for the two sides of the bed and a third for the other lamps in the room. The only other way round this is that they switch their bedside lamps off locally using the switch incorporated in the lamp itself but have to switch them back on again before the 5A circuit switch will take over again.
5. It’s really important to be able to control the light levels in a bedroom from bright down to lower levels for relaxing. Dimmer switches and lighting control systems work best but providing more than one light source, such as ceiling downlights and table lamps also works.
6. Lighting control systems allow one or both of the bedside panels in the master bedroom to be programmed as a “master control panel”. This allows people to turn off all of the lights that are on the system, such as when the kids leave the lights on downstairs after they’ve gone to bed. They can also be programmed to allow them to turn on lights in selected areas to scare off potential intruders, e.g. all of the exterior lighting, all downstairs rooms and the hall, stairwells and landings.
7. Beautiful wardrobes can be seen as a feature worth highlighting. I find that a repeating wash of light from ceiling downlights, one per set of double doors, works best.
8. If a bedroom contains wardrobes, and the people have different timetables, then avoid light pollution in the room with subtle lighting within the wardrobes that just illuminate what’s contained within.
9. If the structure of a bedroom ceiling allows, a ceiling coffer is one of the most relaxing types of lighting in a bedroom. The light source is completely concealed from the viewer and it creates drama!
10. If a bedroom and its ensuite has a dressing room in-between, some low powered marker lights to gently light the route are useful, particularly when the rooms are used by guests, the elderly and children.
