How to Decorate Your Home with Better Lighting For Healthier Eyes ?

Lighting is an essential feature of any home, as it can set the ambiance, provide proper illumination to avoid accidents, and improve mood. But did you know that inappropriate lighting can also be dangerous?

Research published in Sage Journals mentioned that lighting can pose numerous health risks to the eyes. The study found that too much exposure to bright light can cause corneal damage, light sensitivity, and even severe conditions like cataracts and macular degeneration in some situations. Therefore, choosing the proper lighting for your living environment is crucial in ensuring healthy eyes.

When setting up your lighting fixtures, it’s best to consider not only the physical and aesthetic aspects of your home but also your personal health and that of your guests. Strategically choosing the right balance of colors and light placements is key to ensuring a well-lit and eye-friendly home. Below, we look at how poor lighting affects vision health and recommend tips for decorating your home with better lighting for healthier eyes.

Understanding eye health

Many factors at home and in daily life can impact your eye health, which makes practicing eye-healthy habits especially crucial. For instance, wearing the wrong prescription lenses can also lead to eye strain, so it’s important to learn how to measure pupillary distance or the distance between the center of one pupil and the center of the other. This is crucial in determining which part of the lenses you look through, and wrong measurements can lead to discomfort or eye fatigue, which can be compounded by poor lighting. Asking an eye doctor for help or using apps like Opthy can help you accurately measure your pupillary distance and find the right lenses.

As mentioned earlier, poor lighting choices can also be detrimental to your ocular health and cause visual fatigue. This is particularly important in areas of your home where you might be doing a lot of close work like reading or typing, such as in your bedroom, study, or living room. In contrast, research shows proper lighting can lessen fatigue and eye strain, boosting concentration and cognitive performance. This highlights the importance of better lighting in your home, which you can achieve by blending natural and artificial light to promote eye health. By choosing the right lighting options and using comfortable tones, you’ll be on the right track to achieving an adequately illuminated home without compromising your vision during daily activities.

Here’s how you can decorate with lighting for healthier eyes:

Tips for decorating with better lighting

Maximize natural lighting

Maximizing natural lighting is one of the most effective ways to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere when decorating your living room. Research also shows that natural lighting can help reduce visual fatigue, so you can try positioning your sofa near a window to maximize enough natural light. However, too much daylight can lead to overexposure to the sun’s UV rays, which can cause photokeratitis or even cataracts in the long run. To help you maximize natural light in your living room safely, you can use sheer curtains or adjustable blinds from furniture stores like IKEA to control sunlight without completely blocking it out.

Layer your lighting

Other parts of your house, like your bedroom, may not get enough sunlight. You can opt for layered lighting to help solve your natural light issue. This can help you set a dynamic ambiance and achieve a well-lit bedroom. You can combine ambient lighting from lamps with accent lighting like wall lights to add a striking visual effect. Just keep in mind that harsh LED lights emit blue light that can cause eye strain, so adjust your brightness accordingly and strategically place your lighting fixtures to provide the correct and healthy amount of illumination.

Utilize warm lighting

When decorating your bathroom, you can opt for a warm halo effect around your mirror instead of the usual harsh white light that can lead to visual fatigue. This can help minimize eye discomfort when using your mirror to brush your teeth or do your skincare routine. Studies have shown that warm lighting effectively reduces eye strain and fosters a warm or peaceful atmosphere. You can also install low-level or warm accent lighting, such as wall lights or downlights, that can provide enough illumination without giving a harsh sensation to the eyes.

Place task lights strategically

Task lighting, or light fixtures used to provide focused illumination for specific tasks, is essential to your home, particularly in the kitchen. Insufficient lighting when preparing food may force your eyes to work harder, leading to visual fatigue. You can avoid that by placing task lights in areas where you’ll be doing much of the work, such as over the kitchen island. Under-cabinet lighting can also help you find and organize utensils or ingredients more efficiently. If your kitchen has a window, you can also let natural light in to balance out artificial lighting and reduce risks of eye strain.

Proper lighting brightens spaces and is also beneficial for the eyes. From maximizing natural light and layering light sources to strategically picking the right tones and fixtures, you can design your home without sacrificing your vision in many ways. Follow these lighting decoration tips to help preserve your ocular health, and make sure to practice other eye-healthy habits in your daily life as well.

For other home decoration tips, you can check out our wall decor options here at Luxury Art Canvas.