How To Make the Most of Your Indoor Lighting This Summer

When summer rolls around, you may be spending more time around the house, hanging out with your kids, doing some cleaning, and enjoying longer hours of light to cook more — whether you're grilling or trying a new recipe indoors. With some employers giving Summer Fridays, you may even have an extra-long weekend to enjoy your own home!

Since you're spending more time at home, you want to ensure your indoor lighting is the best it can be. You may get tired of just having ceiling lights shining down on you.

Instead, you may want to mix it up a bit this summer. Keep reading for some indoor lighting tips!

Add Indoor String Lights

String lights can create an entirely different vibe for your home — a vibe that complements the longer daylight hours and warm nights.

These lights can be hung around the living room, draped in the kitchen above the cabinets, or put above your bed in your bedroom. You could even consider wrapping the string lights around the staircase if you have one as a different lighting option for that area of the house.

While the string lights won't provide you a ton of light that you may want for cooking or reading, they will set a mood when you want to relax later at night or are up first thing at the crack of dawn.

Consider Adding Dimmers to Your Indoor Lights

Because there are longer days during summer, you may not need a lot of light at different points of the day. Although that's the case, you may feel that you need a bit of light to do different activities. 

If that's the case, changing your light switches to dimmers can let you choose the amount of light you are using. You won't have a light that's too dim or too bright - it would be just right for your needs! Not only that, but switching to dimmers can also help save energy by using less power for the lighting.

Invest in a Motion Sensor Indoor Light

When you think about motion sensor lighting, you may think about the motion sensor lights that you put on the outside of your home. But there are more places to put them than just right outside your home! 

You can also put them indoors. This can increase the safety inside the home. 

For instance, if someone gets up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, you could have motion sensor lighting installed on the stairwell, in the bathroom, or wherever else you think it would be helpful.

This lighting doesn't need to be bright either, especially since it will most likely be used at night. You can use strip lighting, overhead lighting, wall lighting, or whatever makes the most sense for you!

On a different safety note, motion sensor indoor lights can increase safety if you put them right inside your front door. This could scare them away and also alert you that someone may be intruding. Having security cameras pointed at your front door is also always a great idea for safety measures!

Add in Ambient Lighting for Entertainment

Having harsh lighting shining from above on you and your guests at a summer party or just an evening of entertaining during the summer is never a great feeling. Everything seems just a little too in view.

To get rid of this feeling, you can change up your lighting inside! One of the best vibes to go for is ambient lighting. 

To create this look, you could do several different things. 

For starters, consider adding wall lighting that hangs near a couch, a table, or somewhere else where you would be entertaining guests. This gives a softer feel to the lights while still providing light.

On the other hand, you could add strip lights around the tops of cabinetry in the kitchen. This still emits a bright light, but since it is hidden, it comes across a bit less harsh, creating the perfect vibe for entertaining.

If you want to make it even more fun, you could add strip lights with neon colors! This would create an awesome vibe for a nighttime party with fun music and great lighting!

Strategically Place Lamps Around the Home

Since you don't need as much light during the summer, you can choose to add in more lamps around the home so that you use those more than your overhead lights.

These lamps are perfect for turning on while you are sitting and watching TV, if you want to read a book under it, or even if you are working on your laptop in the evening.

When choosing what lights to put into the lamps, be sure not to choose overly harsh lighting options, as this can be hard on the eyes, especially being so close to you. Using warm white lights or even a warm yellow light is always a better option in lamps than a harsher option.

Up Your Indoor Lighting Game This Summer

It's never too late to up your indoor lighting game! If you're thinking about adding new light fixtures or changing out some of your current lights, we have tons of options for you at Birddog Lighting! You can choose from rope lights, bulb lighting, LED lighting, twinkly lights, and so many more!

So what are you waiting for? Go check out our site today!