We know the importance of the living room in the entire house. It’s one of the largest rooms and a central hub for various activities like reading, sleeping, entertaining guests, relaxing, watching TV, having precious family gatherings, and many more to name a few. The living room deserves special attention and careful planning when it comes to lighting it brightly for setting different moods for different occasions. From brightly lit for your reading session to dimmer lighting for a romantic movie night, the living room lighting matters greatly.
Your living room lighting ideas must not be limited to just enhancing the aesthetic. Rather focus on layered lighting that brightens all four corners to form a perfect balance and blissful ambiance. By adding a mix of accent, ambient, and task lighting using floor lamps, table lamps, recessed lighting, and chandeliers, you can illuminate the room for different occasions.
Before we reveal our fun list of topmost 20 Living Room Lighting Ideas, dig deeper into understanding various lighting. Answer the following questions to pick the best lighting idea based on your living room size, need, and purpose.
1. Purpose Of Your Living Room Lighting
Before picking any living room lighting ideas, you must ask yourself what you want to highlight with particular lighting. Find the purpose behind picking any lighting idea so that your options are narrowed. There are various kinds of living room light fixtures and lamps designed for different reasons. There is a center light for the living room, lamps for corners of the room, and many more.
Randomly picking a lighting fixture won’t be the perfect pick when you want to brightly lit the entire room. Or going for a pair of lamps won’t be enough for creating ambient lighting for watching the next IPL with your family or friends. Your purpose will determine picking the right type of lighting for different occasions.
2. Deciding The Lighting of Your Living Room
Do you want to focus on lighting the central space of the room or the corners, ceiling, wall, or fireplace mantel? Pick the functional area of the room that requires proper lighting as you spend the most time there.
Ask yourself, which area needs the most lighting?
Once you’ve picked the perfect space, choose the type of lighting it requires. Whether it needs to be brightly light or focused or needs background ambient lighting. What’s the best way to shine in a particular space?
- If you want to light the whole living room then it requires ambient lighting.
- If you want to brightly lit the areas where you perform certain activities that need great focus such as reading, sewing, or writing then choose a lighting fixture for those spaces.
- If you want to draw attention to a particular living room decor or furniture then consider
- choosing a decorative accent lamp.
3. Type Of Lighting For Your Decor
In the end, it’s what you want is the most essential thing that matters. Whether you want small living room ceiling lights, grand lighting fixtures, or accent lighting, your modern living room can entertain all sorts of decor ideas.
The perfect light placement or creating a center of attention is done using the right type of lights designed for such purposes. Whether you want to focus on a certain decor item or area or want to spread out the lighting through the room, it all depends on your needs. So choose how you want to design based on the activities that you do in your living room.
4. Different Light Forms to Meet your Lighting Demands
As we mentioned before, different types of light fixtures or lamps solve distinct lighting solutions. For instance, if you want to position the light at the correct vertical or horizontal position to highlight the space/area or decor item, then you have to choose the suitable lighting type designed for such needs.
There are different forms and shapes of light that are created to satisfy your lighting requirements. Here are three of the most common types of light fixture or lamps that fits such demands –
- Ceiling Lights – As the name suggests, these lights hang from a chain and are attached close to the ceiling. Suitable for lighting up the central location of the room.
- Table Lights – These lights are placed in the mid-level of the room and are kept on top of furniture. Ideal as a decorative item or lighting up a particular corner of the room.
- Floors Lights – Floor lights for the living room are usually tall and shaped like floor-standing lamps. Perfect for highlighting the nearby sofa, bookshelves, or your souvenir collection.
Understanding Different Kind of Lights
There’s a wide variety of lights out there that serve different purposes based on their design. For instance, a table lamp brightens its surroundings and at the top and bottom of the shade. While a chandelier emits lights in all different directions. Understanding the function of each type of light helps you to utilize the best-fitting light for your living room decor ideas.
Here’s a brief guide on each type of the most common lights and their design purpose.
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Ambient Lighting
Ambient lighting is the most basic type of lighting and also referred to as general lighting. This type of lighting is created by diffused background lights that fill the entire room and raise the overall lighting. Ceiling lights design for the living room do stretch the complete room but it’s not enough for activities that require great focus like reading the bestseller novel in a chair. Ambient lighting is the natural light coming from the windows and often substituted by fixtures.
Ambient lighting is provided using the following fixtures: –
- Chandeliers and other ceiling lighting forms
- Pendant lights hanging from the ceiling
- Torchieres
- Track lighting
- Wall Sconce on either side of the room
- Flush or close-to-ceiling light fixtures
- Recessed ceiling lights
- Lights kits on ceiling fans
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Task Lighting
As the name suggests, task lighting functions as lights created to perform tasks like reading, studying, cooking, applying makeup, and others. These types of lights are brightly lit and help to focus on achieving everyday tasks.
Lights that help to perform tasks with great focus are as follows:-
- Table lamps placed next to a sofa or a chair
- Desk lamps for doing computer work or paperwork
- Swing-arm lamps that focus on a particular position
- Piano lamps or banker’s lamps
- Reading lamps for reading, placed next to a couch or chair
- Full-spectrum lamps
- Pendant lamps or Swag lamps
- Vanity lights
- Adjustable floor lights for living room
- Under counter lights
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Accent Lighting
Accent lighting is more than mood lighting, it’s subtle yet very effective in accentuating a particular area/space or item of the living room. This type of lighting highlights certain features of the room and adds a touch of soft glow in certain areas. It influences the mood and ambiance of the room and draws your attention to the architectural features and valuable items/objects of the room.
It does what you want, it allows you to focus on the best things and keep your attention away from things that aren’t of much value.
Lights that help to emphasize your living room decor are as follows:-
- Novelty lamps, accent lamps or decorative tiffany lamps
- Wall Lights
- Up-lights
- Spotlights and Picture lights
20 Amazing Living Room Lighting Ideas That Sets The Mood Instantly
Now that you understand how lighting works, here are some of the best living room lighting design ideas we recommend.
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Find The Perfect Pair
One is never enough! Take your love of chic pendant lights by finding a perfect pair to decorate the stunning living room. By doubling the lights, you double the glow, and impact of these beautiful twin pendant lights. The twin lights make your interior design an incredibly well-planned affair. Place these lights above your dining table so they illuminate the entire place and give a sense of balance and symmetry. These modern twin ceiling lights designed for the living room can brighten up or dim light as per your requirements.
These pendant lights create a focused source of light that can brighten up your dinner time. Go for minimal, or oversized lights that complement your interior design.
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Turn The Wall Into A Statement
If you’ve got an impressive wall, flaunt it! These functional wall art and decor make up the best conversation starter that draws attention to untalked areas of a home. It’s usually the furniture or a mantelpiece that takes away people’s attention, it’s time to use what you’ve got. The wall decor is a brilliant way to highlight the beauty of every corner and space of the living room.
The massive wall with lights instantly uplight the entire room’s ambiance and turns into a brilliant mood setter. Wall art fits perfectly into the contemporary interior design and creates an excellent minimal cast to the room. The living room wall light design is also a terrific option for creating a cozy ambiance for a fun movie or game night.
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Radiate the Corner
Corners deserve as much love as the rest of the area in the living room. You never know how you might enjoy spending your time by the corner of your cozy couch or chair. A lonely armchair will become your ideal place to read the next self-help book or watch Netflix shows on your tab by the window. A perfectly fitting floor lamp that works as a gorgeous decor item and lighting will make your days much better and cozier.
When you want to create a safe or blissful space in your living room, always think of the corner. The empty corner won’t remain empty anymore with a stunning floor lamp that complements your interior design.
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Go For Modern Pendant Lamps for Family Gatherings
The unique mix of track lighting in pendant lamp design is a perfect use of high ceilings or even the lower ones to flaunt your dining furniture. The track-lighting decor creates much cleaner and minimalist visuals compared to other lamps. Teamed with fun and creative lamps, you can completely transform your living room. These simple living room ceiling lights are easier to install and offer great flexibility.
The modern designed pendant lamps are a beautiful addition to your living room. The lights are symbolic of fun occasions and moments shared around the dining table, eating delicious meals while chatting for hours with family and friends.
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Wall Lamps for Highlighting Your Room Amenities
When you’ve put all your blood, sweat, and tears into creating the house of your dreams with only the excellent amenities, let your lights put some shine to them. Powered with an empty fireplace, let the wall lights add a warm glow throughout the room. These lights are the substitute for giving a warm shine instead of the fireplace in summers. The mounted wall lamps brighten up the entire room and every corner.
With a yellow-like glow, these wall sconces complement the wood accents of your interior decor. Make sure to install these wall sconces at a good distance from one another and one and at each spot of the living room that requires special attention.
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Oversized Statement Pieces
Your drawing room lights aren’t just for lighting a particular corner or spot of the room, a light that’s also aesthetically pleasing. An oversized statement piece with a sleek metal dome design, minimalist, and a timeless silhouette is quite a way to maximize the decor of your living room. This slim yet striking arches floor lamp provides ample lighting for your leisure-based activities like playing the piano and many more.
The lighting lets your focus on the activity you are performing while creating a blissful ambiance. This stunning statement piece looks stunning even when it’s not turned on. This type of light works as an art piece itself while also highlighting valuable pieces of furniture or decor items in the living room.
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Go For a Fun & Functional Lamp Shade
Add a fun lamp by your comfy sofa where you have your deeper and insightful conversation with your friends and family. Don’t just add a fun-looking floor lamp but also look for the one that can be also functional. A lamp where you can place your books, teacups, car keys, and much other useful stuff. Make sure to choose complementary lamps that go great with your colorful sofa, minimal interior design.
The lamp yellow cast of lighting makes drinking wine, coffee, or tea with your group of close friends a cozy and wonderful event. The elegant design sofas with bright walls, chic furniture make the fun lamp really pop in that space and creates an inviting spot for you.
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Let The Ceiling Shine
When your living room is quite large or lacks natural lighting, then let the ceiling replace the brightness you need. A single ceiling fixture won’t be effective enough to fill in for the natural lighting that’s required in spacious living rooms. Opt for multiple overhead lights such as recessed lighting, combined with pendant lighting as well to upgrade the ambiance and glow of the living room. The recessed light angle the light to the floor and the wall, resulting in illuminating the entire room.
Plus, the unique technique of recessed light to create the source of illumination in a hidden form within the wall or ceiling is quite interesting. And these lights don’t take much vertical space and are perfectly suitable for living rooms with beautiful ceilings.
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Set the Mood for Gaming, Movie, or Karaoke Nights
These minimalist nordic corner floor lamps are pieces of art rather than just a lamp. The ultimate mood-setter, soft glow, uplifting the entire look and feel of the living room. Plus, it’s minimal, durable and energy-saving of all the wonderful features it’s designed with. It results in a dramatic transformation of the room which sets the ideal tone for fun activities like gaming, watching Netflix, or doing karaoke with friends and family all night.
And if your interior design has the minimalist design all over, then this sleek lamp is sure to add utter sophistication to your space. With a bit of warmth and a realm of elegant simplicity, these fine floor lamps are quite an option to enhance the living room.
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Spot The Spotlights
If you’ve got amazing art pieces and want to draw people’s focus to them, we’ll recommend choosing spotlights. These lights direct light onto individual artworks in the most effective way of illuminating them. The ceiling fixtures can also be recessed or surface-mounted and also easily adjusted to any direction of the room. The spotlights, as the name suggests, cover most of the artwork by using a range of light-beam spread rather than just a small part of it. The idea behind these lights is to highlight the art pieces better than anything in the room so your attention gets captured in the very first instance.
Modern and minimal, perfect for every type of living room. These lights add warmth to earthy tones, colorful design, and artful accessories.
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Sculptural Lighting For a Modern Edge
Contemporary lighting pieces can completely transform your living space. Resembling a unique art piece from the museum, the sculptural lighting effuses warmth, creates a dynamic visual, and communicates its design with the viewer. Incorporating stunning light sculptures into your living room can stimulate the environment and work as a great conversation starter.
This light and airy sculpture gives an edgy modern touch to the room while complementing the contemporary interior design. With less color and design, the ceiling lamp creates a balanced look while giving a warm glow to the room.
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Throw a Radiating Glow From Behind
Much like magic, casting a magnificent glow in your living room will enhance the overall look to another level. If there’s a mirror spot in your living room or beautiful closet, cabinet, or sideboard that’s worth highlighting, then we recommend casting a mysterious glow around that space. Use colored light bulbs behind these spaces, for instance, mirror, locker, chest, or any other to make it the center of attention.
With brightly lit bulbs from behind, you can turn a simple mirror, chest, or cupboard into a precious item and give it a grand silhouette. The light installation behind your valuable asset, furniture or any other item must complement the tone of your interior design so choose the colors wisely.
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Create a Cozy Ambience with Fewer Lights
If you want to warm up and cover yourself in multiple blankets on a Saturday night for watching your favorite film, then the string lights are the best fit. For dark interior decor, these yellow-lit lights add warmth and stimulate a comforting and relaxed ambiance. Your living room aesthetic must reflect your mood and needs, and nothing can match a cozy decor.
It’s also an excellent mood-setter to entertain guests or relax with a glass of wine at the end of an exhausting day. To enhance your comfort level, consider a curved statement sofa in a dark shade to complement the string lights.
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Go For Whimsical Pendants Lighting
To add a playful touch to your living room and keep the guest talking about well-planned design, opt for unique and eye-catching pendant lighting. Don’t keep your living room from being incredibly interesting, curious, and presentable. Once you are done designing the room for a comfy and inviting space in the house for guests, friends, and family, make sure to add a touch of curiosity and elegance with fun lighting.
Sophistication doesn’t have to be boring, it can be so many things, including an extra punch of whimsical and eccentricity. Plus, these small living room ceiling lights are the perfect way to light up a dining table. It is designed to match the contemporary decor tone by being incredibly sleek, minimalistic, and visually intriguing.
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Contemporary Interior Decor Meets Urban Chandeliers
To match the current contemporary interior decor and furniture, the choice of chandeliers must also be modern, timeless, and minimal. The modern chandeliers aren’t grand as the traditional ones, rather create a sense of space and draw the eye upward effortlessly due to their unique design. The chandeliers emit lights that properly fit the lighting requirement of the room. By creating a soft, gentle, and homely glow in the living room, the chandeliers are no less than the big brighter ones. These urban ceiling hanging lights for the living room carry simplicity, timeless silhouettes and blend seamlessly into the landscape of the room.
The idea with modern chandeliers is not to draw too much attention to itself, rather add an interesting and warm touch to the living room decor.
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Add a Pop Of Colour
More is always more! If you aren’t much into the current wave of minimalism and want to brighten up the most frequent gathering spot of your family and friends, then consider adding a pop of color to the living room decor. If your living space lacks a certain hint of colorful burst, then it’s time to add colorful lamps for an energetic and funky vibe. Add a splash of color to your walls and accentuate it even more through accessories like bright lamp shades. The vibrant hue infuses the space with cheerful, positive, and happy energy.
Using bright lamps in orange, green, red, violet, and other colors can completely elevate the room. For a more dramatic and vivid look, go for lamps with prints and ethnic Persian designs.
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Make it Center of Attention
If you haven’t managed to collect precious souvenirs or art pieces from across the globe, let the lamps become the centerpiece of your living room. Yes, the lamps will offer you both function and visuals. Choose a statement piece or lamp that looks more like a piece of art than a light source to gaze at in your living space. Boast your collection of lights rather than the millions worth of art pieces that don’t even light up any corner of the room.
It’s cherry on the cake if the center light for the living room comes with intricate details. The unique design will incite more curiosity, gain more gaze and invoke emotions.
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Neon Lights Aesthetics
Young, cool and trendy, neon lights aesthetics are here to embrace your living room decor design. With the matching tone of minimalism, this modern aesthetic creates a great effect in the room. Clean-lined and designed in unique artistic illustration with great warmth and subtle touches of simplicity and elegance, the neon lights are quite a charming addition. The disco vibe of the neon lights creates a futuristic and nostalgic effect in your living room. Plus, the neon lighting can be as personal as you wish, from creating custom quotes, drawings, and phrases, you can design what you want to display on your wall.
Now the question is no longer whether to choose neon lighting for your living room or not, it’s what to write to display on your walls.
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Light Up the Mantle
If you are fortunate enough to have a fireplace in your living room, it’s time to make the most of it. Don’t just keep the mantelpiece for displaying your trophies, photographs, or art pieces, brighten up space with stunning sets of small lamps. Highlight your architectural spots by installing impressive sconces or decorating pairs of small lamps on the mantel display.
Bring your living room lighting to unique spots that deserve more attention and lighting. Choose lamps that complement the decor of the mantle yet be a bit contrasting and eye-catching. You can mismatch the two lamps at each corner of the mantle for a playful twist or go for a matching pair for balance and symmetry.
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Match the Minimal Interior Aesthetic with Perfect Lights
Simple living room ceilings lights are usually pretty minimal and limited to the matching interior decor. If you also want to embrace the minimalist tone of your living room then consider choosing a statement light that elevates the room design in the same way. Minimalistic lights are present in the market to cater to the needs of matching a simple, spacious, and sophisticated room decor while emitting a soft and warm glow. These lights usually complement the all-white aesthetic beautifully.
Conclusion
It’s quite a daunting task to match the living room lighting design with the overall theme of the interior and furniture decor as it requires great effort to look effortless. Now with perfect lights, you can successfully manage to do so.