Creative Illumination with Lights and Lamps
Every household and commercial establishment makes use of lighting fixtures everyday to provide illumination. With proper illumination, many daily activities automatically become easier to accomplish—people see everything clearly without straining their eyes. But apart from illumination, lights and lamps are likewise used for other purposes.
Take, for example, in the home—the soft warm glow of standing lamps or luminaries create a unique play of light and shadow. Place them near alcoves of your home where flowers and other decorative elements are displayed, and they draw attention to the unique beauty of these components.
Line them up outside, and they do not just illuminate paths but also create a warm, soothing charm to the landscape. The shadows cast by restrained or subdued light add more depth to the area and all the components in it.
Likewise, if you pay attention to and use different shapes and design of lampshades, you add greater allure with lights for they create “sculpted” light to further beautify or style both interior and exterior spaces.
In restaurants, on the other hand, they make use of warm, soft lighting to show off the gradation of colours of important ingredients. With this strategic lighting, there can be greater appreciation for how food was cooked. Restaurateurs also add that lighting helps in increasing the appetite of customers; dim lighting particularly brings out reds (which may be found in the colour scheme of the restaurant or through the dinnerware used) to enhance desire for food. Dining in half-light from lamps provides an altogether different experience.
Worth mentioning as well is the fact that lights are commonly used for festivals and rituals. LED lights that resemble the flickering illumination provided by candles are used in celebration of special occasions or events, with Christmas being a perfect example. At the Rockefeller Centre in New York, the lighting of the Christmas tree there is always a big event.
Meanwhile, in other countries, lights represent the hope people hold on to, especially after a devastating occurrence. In Kobe, Japan, particularly, there’s a big festival of lights held every year after the anniversary of the great earthquake in 1995. People come to the town square to see illuminated structures that remind them of how everybody bravely rose from the darkness of a tragedy.
Needless to say, lamps and lights are essential for everyday life. And with calculated intensity, design, and placement, pursuing function and beauty for both residential and commercial places is made easier.