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How to Light Your Perfect Home Office
Lighting your office correctly is vital to producing a productive and comfortable working environment. Our handy guide tells you all you need to know to ensure you have the best lighting for your home office. After reading our tips and tricks, you can shop our range of office lights here.
Natural light
When picking a room for your home office, try to find somewhere with lots of natural light. Not only does this have great health benefits (increases happiness, vitamin D, and productivity), it also reduces the costs you may need to spend on artificial lighting.
However, we understand that this isn’t always possible, and some rooms may not have any windows at all. This is where it is extremely important that you select the right lighting in order to mimic natural light as closely as possible.
For an office with no windows, halogen light bulbs are a good way of replicating natural light, as the incandescent light they emit closely resembles daylight. They also have the option of being dimmed, perfect for when the evenings start drawing in, but it isn’t fully dark yet.
A layered lighting scheme
A common choice within home offices is the use of layered lighting. This refers to the concept of having more than one type of lighting within a room, each type having a different purpose.
Within an office setting, a good combination is ambient and task lighting. Ambient lighting bathes the whole room in light, whilst task lighting focuses on brightening up specific areas.
A central ceiling light offers the simple solution to ambient lighting, as it will diffuse light evenly across the entire room. For larger offices, you may need two ceiling lights to adequately illuminate the space. If you have opted for a pendant style, a lampshade is a great way to soften the light produced and add a touch of customisation to your fixtures.
Desk lighting
Where possible, aim to position your desk in front of a window. This stops any unwanted glare reflecting onto your computer screen and making it difficult for you to see clearly. Unwelcome glare is likely to be an issue with any light source located behind where you sit.
Task lighting is perfect for illuminating a specific area, as it allows you to direct the focus of the beam wherever it’s needed. In an office setting, task lighting is best produced by desk lights - these are typically small, portable lamps that sit on or beside your workspace.
We offer a wide range of desk lights, including LED desk lamps. These are typically made with an adjustable stem or head so that you can change the angle of the light - helping you carry out your task, whether it be reading, drawing, or working on a computer.
If your home office has multiple areas for high-focus tasks, be sure to include an element of task lighting for each area. This means that you don’t have to waste time moving things about to position them in the light. Instead, you can get down to business quickly and easily.
If you have a small desk and lack space for a bulky lamp, there are even clamp or clip-on lamps available. This type of fixture is perfect for those awkward spaces that may be difficult to illuminate - easily attachable to a variety of items, like the edge of your desk or a wall-shelf. Take a look at our range of clamp on spotlights to see how these could fit in with your office space.
An alternative option for smaller offices could be recessed wall lighting and track fixtures. These can efficiently illuminate a specific area, without taking up too much space. For more information on this, please have a look at our different types of lighting fixtures guide.
Optimal lighting for video calls
When preparing for a video call, always set up your equipment so that your main source of light is facing you. Positioning lights behind you will not only result in glare on your screen, but also your face being in shadow – not ideal for an important business meeting.
It is also best practice to ensure that any desk lights aren’t supplying light from above or below your face, as these angles can produce unflattering shadows across the face or even wash you out entirely.
Protecting your eyesight
When doing lots of close-up work or staring at a screen for long periods of time, it’s important to be mindful of how this can affect your eyesight. To reduce any negative effects, we recommend using warm LED or incandescent bulbs in your office. Both are proven to produce little-to-no UV rays - the main reason people tend to get headaches or strain their eyes whilst working.
Despite being cheap and readily available, it is best to avoid buying white or fluorescent light bulbs, as these can be very damaging to your eyes. Warm lighting is far safer; typically yellowish in colour, it is much closer to natural daylight. Our guide on colour temperature can help you understand more about this.
