Hallway lighting

The theater starts from the coat rack, and the house starts from the hallway. And it's good if your home starts with a large, naturally lit hall. And if this is an ordinary narrow corridor? Add the right lighting here so guests can appreciate the beauty and comfort of your home without bumping into corners, wardrobe or hanger. Yes, and you, opening the door from the street and turning on the light in the hallway (as they used to say in the old days), with peace of mind can say “I'm at home! ".

The lighting of the first room of your house or apartment will depend on its size and the presence (absence) of an adjacent corridor.

There are general rules and guidelines for lighting:

• Choose such a level of illumination so that in the mirror you can see your reflection clearly, without a shadow, but at the same time you do not squint from too bright light.
• In this case, lighting should hide flaws or lack of repair. Diffuse light from opaque lamps can help distract your eyes from an unwanted object.
• The light level in the first and adjacent rooms should be approximately equal in intensity. This will make your home a whole.
• For convenience and energy saving in large halls, make several groups of light sources with different switches.
• In long corridors, install walk-through switches that can be turned on at the beginning of the corridor and turned off at the end.
• If a separate dressing room is located in the hallway, then its own lighting should be provided there.
• Do not place sconces on the walls of corridors where you will constantly walk and can accidentally hit and break wall lights. Do not install overhanging lamps in rooms with low ceilings for the same reason.
• Light up the mirror separately.
• When choosing a light bulb, pay attention to its spectrum. Incandescent lamps with a yellow spectrum are the most pleasing to the eye. With a cool blue spectrum, you are unlikely to be able to create a cozy entrance room.

The hallway illumination does not have such stringent requirements as for the rest of the premises. But even here there is a variety of species, on which the choice of lamps and the method of their installation depends.

• In terms of the area of ​​light propagation, illumination can be general and local. Moreover, in the interior, these two types can be combined.
• By origin, nature, lighting is natural and artificial.
• According to the principle of operation - always on (off) or with a motion sensor.

The task of the general light is to cover the entire area of ​​the hallway. In a small area, this is often the only source. To solve the problem, you need to think about which fixtures to choose.

• A chandelier under the ceiling is a classic option. In a large square hall, a multi-tiered hanging chandelier will look beautiful and out of place. The small front chandelier should be compact. The shape is round, square. Anyone, just to fit the interior and give a sufficient amount of light.
• Sometimes sconces can act as independent general lighting. And in the smallest hallway, try installing a couple of wall lights for even lighting. Do this better at a height of about 2 meters.

• To install spotlights you need stretch or suspended ceilings, which will also provide a reflective effect, which will give additional light.
• The spot luminaire can be installed both on the wall and on the ceiling. With the help of a wall spot, even general illumination can be achieved, since several lamps installed on one rail can easily turn in different directions and can completely illuminate the hallway with the corridor.

Local, local lighting can be installed on a wall, near a mirror, on a mirror, be built into a closet, illuminate a shelf or a painting. Such an organization of space will allow you to quickly find the right things and carefully examine yourself in the mirror before leaving the house.

The above sconces, spotlights and spots as local lamps include such a design move as the penetration of light through doors with stained glass or frosted glass, as well as corrugated doors. Due to the switched on lamp or natural light, the light penetrating through such a door will look very beautiful in any hallway.

By its nature, lighting can be natural. This can be achieved if a window is cut through the roof of your private house above the front door. This type of light penetration is called a lantern. It can be in the form of a simple frame or with a complex configuration. With this design, the sun will peep into your hallway throughout the daylight hours or rain drumming on the glass, leaving behind water patterns.

We are used to the fact that the principle of operation of our luminaires is switching on and off with a switch. Modern lamps are produced with movement sensors, they can be installed independently. In order for them to work, you do not need to constantly touch the switch, you just need to walk under the lamp. This means that you do not need to think about where in the long corridor and hallway to install switches so that it is convenient to use them. In addition, such a device will save you money by conserving energy.

At the point of attachment, lighting can be ceiling, wall, built-in furniture and even floor. If you have a small hallway with high ceilings, then it looks like a well. In this case, designers suggest:

• make suspended or stretch ceilings with spotlights around the perimeter. They will visually enlarge the room and make it more comfortable;
• install several single high-tech style lamps on a long leg. The ceiling will visually approach and cease to be a well;
• take advantage of the spots, turn the lamps down and onto the walls. The hallway will appear larger and brighter.

In a hallway with low ceilings, install flat ceiling lights or on a very short leg. The hall may well be illuminated with a chandelier from the ceiling, and with spots, and LED lamps, and spotlights. Much will depend on the overall design of the room.

When we talk about wall lighting, we mean, first of all, sconces. But the adjoining corridor can be illuminated using LED lamps built into a matte plastic box. And LED strips will help to make the backlight embossed. This illumination can be placed under the ceiling, above the floor, or as a pattern along the entire wall.

Lamps can also be built into the wall, as well as into the ceiling. If your walls are finished with plasterboard or plastic, then the built-in lamps will resemble portholes in a nautical theme or fly like sun dandelions all over the wall. Built-in lighting in furniture will help locally focus on some element of the decor: a mirror, a wardrobe, a picture, a panel, a photograph.In this case, in the cabinet, you can bring spotlights to open shelves or put a solid horizontal lamp on top of the cabinet. The light can also be switched on from photocells when closing and opening the cabinet.

The most unusual solution is the floor lighting. To do this, the matt LED luminaires are positioned below the floor level in such a way that they appear to be one with the flooring. Such light must be let along the perimeter of the corridor and packed in a box made of transparent durable plastic.

What else can you offer for this very beauty? Especially if your hallway is of non-standard sizes. A technique called room zoning will help to answer this question. Having visually determined why you need this or that piece of the corridor, its functions, select the lighting specifically for this area.

First zone – directly at the front door. This means that there should be a switch and a lot of light, because you should not look for your clothes and shoes in the dark.

The second zone is a mirror. Here you can position the sconces over the reflective surface or on the sides. Alternatively, you can buy small battery-operated lamps for the mirror and glue it directly onto it. Modern mirrors come with built-in spotlights. With this method of mounting, it will seem that there are twice as many lamps than in reality, and this will make it even lighter.

The main thing is that when choosing a lamp for a mirror, do not forget that:

• the light should not fall from behind, otherwise the shadow will not allow you to do makeup, correct your hair and examine yourself before leaving the house;
• the light spectrum should be natural yellow, otherwise something blue or white will look at you from the mirror;
• lighting should be soft, not too bright, not blind the eyes with an open lamp (ideal is a lamp with a flexible arm or a spot);
• the height of the light points depends on the height of those who use the mirror, but the light should not fall from below and be higher than two meters.

Third zone - wardrobe, hanger, shelf. And electric lights can be built into pieces of furniture.

Fourth zone in the large hall there is an armchair that you can sit on to change your shoes. You can put a floor lamp next to it and the feeling of warmth at home will not leave you.

Fifth zone - the corridor. Here, as mentioned above, there can be ceiling, wall, and floor light. With the help of decorative lighting, you will not only get rid of a long dark corridor, but also create a romantic atmosphere for your home. Use spots to illuminate dark corners.

In this case, your lamps will be combined into several groups, each of which will need a separate switch. Or you can use motion-sensing lamps.

In order for your hallway to look cozy in any design, you need to choose the right colors for decor and lighting.

If your room for receiving guests and households is small, then it should not be dark in color, otherwise it will visually decrease even more. To visually enlarge it, make the walls light and the furniture darker. If there are multiple doors in the hallway, paint them bright colors against the pale walls. Such a decision will distract the eyes from the small hallway, and it will seem larger.

If you are recreating a specific style, then the colors should match it.

• Minimalism associated with dull colors. It can be white, black or its shades. All this is combined with natural materials. Here, chandeliers and other lamps should be of simple forms with no frills.
• High tech - it is silvery metal and glass. The style is so diverse that you can create a wonderful hallway.A wide variety of colors can be added to basic silver. Appropriate lamps from floor to ceiling in all colors, but monochromatic.

• Pop Art - the lighting is bright, colorful. A chandelier with several colored balls and an LED strip are appropriate for this style.
• Classicism - these are brown and sand sconces trimmed with gilding, a wrought-iron crystal chandelier. And here the size of the hallway plays a decisive role. This solution is possible in the lobby.
• Empire style also requires space. There are no halftones here. Bright gold or red, green or blue lamps will be the perfect accent in your hallway.

We do not always get such premises that we are completely satisfied with. We'll have to think about how to make a cozy hallway out of a small, narrow or long hallway; how to illuminate an L-shaped corridor so as not to bump into its corners; how to zone the space in a square hallway so that the area does not seem empty.

• With a high ceiling, you can adjust the height by setting the spots. By adjusting the angle of repetition of the lamps so that the light falls on the walls, we distract our eyes from the ceiling, and it will appear lower.
• A more expensive option is with stretch or false ceilings. It is used to lower the ceiling, hide construction defects, or to increase the space with the help of light from ceiling lamps reflecting from such a ceiling.
• A narrow and elongated hallway can be visually enlarged with the help of brighter light, which should intensely illuminate the walls.

• If your corridor seems dark and uninteresting to you, make a runway out of it with LED strip or a row of lamps.
• In an L-shaped hallway, use lamps of the same style, but with a different appearance. This way you can separate one area from the other.
• Don't forget about the light that bounces off the mirror! The correct arrangement of the lamps can greatly enlarge the room.
• A classic chandelier on a long suspension in the center of a square hallway draws attention to itself and distracts from the large space.

In modern new-build apartments, the hallway is not an isolated room for entering a house, but a more or less large hall. It has more natural light from the surrounding area, which means fewer problems with artificial lighting. It's even easier when building or buying your home and there are even more design options.

Dark little hallways in Soviet-style apartments, for example, in "Khrushchev", are more demanding on artificial lighting. We talked a lot about how to increase space with the help of light. Here are some more tips:

• To keep the hallway bright, use lamps of the yellow and white spectrum. Blue lamps will make the light dead.
• Energy saving lamps with opaque white light will not irritate and blind your eyes.
• Use secondary light by installing interior doors with glass openings.

• If mezzanines are mounted in the hallway, paint their lower partition with light shiny enamel and install spotlights around the perimeter. When you turn on the light, the ceiling will not press on you. And because of the reflection of the enamel, it will seem even higher.
• Decorative floor lighting around the perimeter will increase the area of ​​the room and it will not seem closed.
• Decorate long corridors with paintings, photographs, panels, the outline of which is illuminated with LED lamps or garlands.
• If there are niches in the hallway, use them for additional spot lighting.

How to choose the right lamps for your hallway, you will be prompted in the video below.