How to Light Up your Home Office (Natural and Lamps)
Setting up your home office can be a bit daunting the first time you do it and one thing you may not know is how important it is to light a home office properly.
Home office lighting can if it’s not done right, cause eye strain, migraines, headaches, and more.
So, we spoke to some ambient lighting specialists about how to set up a home office so that the light in your work space is conducive to your health and productive working and this is what they told us.
Layering Home Office Lighting
They say that the most important thing about light in a home office is that it ought to be able to be changed to suit your task.
That is your want to layer your lighting so that you can switch things up a bit (excuse the pun) when you need to.
So, you want to start with ambient lighting which should be warm, even, soothing, and on a dimmer control so that you can adjust the levels of lighting whenever you want to in the home office.
Then, you want some task lights on the desk and in other parts of the office where you work regularly.
The Importance Of Natural Light
Don’t forget natural light when you consider the ambient light in your office space.
Natural light can really enrich a home office space and it’s very easy on your eyes. However, there can be times of day when the direct sunlight through a window creates an unpleasant glare that really hurts your eyes.
Net curtains or translucent blinds can help to ameliorate this level of glare.
And we’d recommend setting your desk up so that your computer screen is perpendicular to the light source through any window, this helps to prevent any problems caused by the contrast difference between the brightness of the natural light and the computer screen itself.
What Is Task lighting?
Task lighting is lighting that is used to throw light on a specific task or activity.
So, think about a desk lamp, for example, this kind of lighting is very useful for working with as long as your desk lamp is properly designed to meet your needs.
We recommend desk lamps with long extendable, adjustable arms so that you can target the light wherever you need it to be.
You might also consider a floor lamp if you like to read in a certain chair away from your desk – this will help to throw lighting on the page without overwhelming the rest of your office.
An LED strip light can be very useful for lighting areas where you do manual work or for accent lighting around your desk. And so on…
How To Place Light Sources
Where you place light fixtures in home offices is very important. You don’t just want to stand every light on a desk and hope for the best as you carry out your computer work.
Instead, you should look to place the lamp or lights in a space that doesn’t create any kind of glare in your line of sight and which doesn’t throw shadows in the space of other lights.
If your home office chair has wheels, then you might want to consider, for example, lighting that you can move with your nice sustainable home office desk chair. Or you could consider a different type of chair that works better with your existing lighting.
You may also create shadows with your body as you work – to try and avoid this it’s a good idea to place lamps on the opposite side of the hand you use most. Otherwise, your hand and arm are likely to cause shadows.
Don’t be afraid to use wall-mounted fixtures to position lights so that they benefit your space but test the placement before you install them to make sure they don’t interfere with screen or monitor work in the room.
How To Use Lighting To Alleviate Your Day Spent Hunched Over A Computer
There’s no magical cure for the strain on your eyes caused by a whole day working in a room over a screen.
After all, this isn’t what our bodies were designed for – we’re made for working in the fields more than working at home in a room.
However, you can reduce the amount of eye strain that you suffer from by reducing glare and contrast in your place wherever possible and minimizing harsh light.
Use light diffusers and dimmer switches to reduce the volume of light in the office wherever necessary and don’t forget to turn up the light when doing paperwork rather than computer stuff – this requires more light for us to see effectively.
Getting the light right in your home office is a challenge but it’s one that you can meet easily if you think about the kind of light you want to create before you buy the lights for your workspace.
