Lighting is one of the most important design decisions you will make around the home. Lights are used for all different reasons – such as to highlight task areas, zone spaces, change the mood of your rooms, add visual interest and bring attention to design features in the home (e.g. art or architectural details).

For the past few years I’ve leaned towards using LED lighting as much as possible. LED lights are super energy efficient and use around 85% less energy than halogen or incandescent lighting. Not only is this obviously much better for the environment but it also results in significant savings to power bills.

Today I thought I would bring you my top 10 LED lighting ideas using examples from projects I’ve recently completed. Many of the products used in the projects featured in this post were sourced from Beacon Lighting (http://www.beaconlighting.com.au/). Beacon Lighting is definitely my go-to brand when I’m looking for on trend, yet affordable, lighting solutions.

Here are my top 10 LED lighting ideas for around the home:

1. Switch to an LED desk lamp

What better way to start the list of LED lighting ideas than to show you my home office. On my desk you’ll see the Blakely table lamp in white, which I picked up recently from Beacon Lighting. I love this lamp as it not only looks modern and suits the Scandi styling of my office, but it gives great light in the evenings when I’m working after the kids go to bed. The good thing about LED lamps like this is you don’t have to worry about bulbs as the mechanism is all built in.

Top 10 LED lighting ideas for the home | The Little Design Corner

2. LED strip lighting in the bathroom

LED strip lighting is a great way to bring a different lighting mood to your bathroom. In the Roseville bathrooms I specified LED strip lighting under the medicine cabinets in both the main bathroom and the ensuite. You can’t see these at all during the day, but when turned on at night they give off a soft glow and create a lovely evening atmosphere. They are also a great idea for homes with kids as these can be left on all night for when little people need to take night trips to the bathroom.

Roseville Project by The Little Design Corner

3. LED downlights - modern placement for ornate ceilings

Top 10 lighting ideas for the home | The Little Design Corner

The project we did in 2015 in Roseville involved the complete transformation of a 100 year old Federation house. The home needed total rewiring as part of the renovation and this gave me the opportunity to completely redesign the lighting plan and put in a whole range of different lighting solutions, many of them LED products.

In this project I specified dimmable LED lights in all of the living spaces (i.e. bedrooms, lounge/living areas). Having dimmable lights means that different moods can be created depending on what is happening or what light might be needed. Kids can also have the lights dimmed at night in lieu of a night light.

What was a bit different about how I used the downlights in the Roseville project was the placement of the lights in the ceilings. Normally you might expect to find downlights in each corner of a room and although there’s nothing wrong with that, for this project I didn’t want to interrupt the beautiful ornate ceilings so I chose to place the lights in groupings of two in discreet parts of the ceiling, as you can see in the images. The result is a modern lighting solution in the middle of an original feature and the combination of the two works really well together.

Roseville Project | The Little Design Corner

4. LED downlights - more traditional placement

If that look isn’t really your thing, then LED downlights also look great in more traditional arrangements as well (i.e. in rows or in corners of a room). One thing to make sure is that you don’t over use downlights, especially in large open spaces, as this can make the light far too bright and the ceiling can look really cluttered, even when the lights are off.

In the North Bondi project that I’ve just completed (below) you can see how LED downlights have been carefully spaced apart to make sure the whole room is lit, without the ceiling being covered in downlights.

Bondi Project | Styling by The Little Design Corner

When choosing LED downlights you will need to make decisions on wattage, lumens, the angle of the beams and colour of the light. Paying attention to these factors helps you work out how many lights will be needed in a large space to ensure there are no ‘dead’ zones (i.e. areas that haven’t been lit well). It can be a bit complicated to work all this out but Beacon Lighting have a great range of resources on their website about how this all works and in store you can try out the different wattages and colours of the downlights in person.

5. LED floor lamp

Another LED lighting solution used in the Roseville project was this LED floor lamp (the Blakely floor lamp in black). The classic lines of the lamp work perfectly with the vintage mid-century chair and the lamp was the perfect size for the corner of this master bedroom.

6. Wall lights

A different kind of LED lighting solution used in the Roseville project was this LED up/down wall light. These lights are great for this hallway as they light the space while giving the walls some extra interest during the day when the lights aren’t on. Their modern shape make them almost like little architectural features of their own.

Roseville Project by The Little Design Corner | Enzo Mari print

You can get a very similar product to this at Beacon Lighting, such as the Miles up/down wall light or the Bilboa (pictured below).

Bilboa LED wall light by Beacon Lighting

7. Outdoors - LED spotlights

LED lights are also a great solution for outdoors. Again in the Roseville project I specified this exterior up/down wall light. These were put on sensors for safety (to see where you’re going when you approach the house at night) and security (so they switch on if unwanted guests approach the perimeter of the home). The modern black shape contrasts really well against the original brick façade.

Again, you can find a range of similar products to this at Beacon Lighting for a very affordable price. I would suggest trying the Kube exterior wall bracket (pictured below).

8. LED lamps in the kids' rooms

Because LED lamps operate at a much cooler temperature than halogen lights, which tend to get incredibly hot, it makes them a great choice for kids rooms. The Blakely table lamp in white looks perfect in this shared boys room that I designed for a little boy who loved yellow and bananas!

9. Switch out your globes

If the above ideas seem a bit too much for what you can achieve or afford at the moment the easiest way to start using LED lights in your home is simply to switch out your halogen bulbs for LED light bulbs. These cost a little bit more than halogen or incandescent bulbs but they last heaps longer and you will hardly be changing them at all once they are in – plus they use less electricity to run, resulting in lower power bills.

Here’s a few traditional lamps I’ve used in recent projects that I used LED light bulbs in:

10. Flush mount downlights

This final idea is one that I have really wanted to use in a project for a long time now – and that is flush mount downlights, like this look below. - which is a brand new product at Beacon Lighting.

Surface Brass downlight from Beacon Lighting

I was excited to find a range of these surface mounted downlights are Beacon recently as this is a lighting solution I’ve seen in many of the architectural magazines lately. These lights look great over a kitchen bench or as an alternative to pendants next to a bed, or basically wherever you might need more focused task lighting. They have a super modern look to them and make a statement without being too prominent. They also look great in groupings.

I hope these ideas have been useful for how you might incorporate LED lights around your home. You can shop Beacon Lighting’s full LED lighting range at: http://www.beaconlighting.com.au/lighting/led-lighting.html

Have you got any tips for using LED lights around the home that I haven’t included? Please comment below and let me know!

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Top 10 LED lighting ideas for your home