How do you light a windowless or blind room?
The presence of a windowless room in your home, or blind room, can be a real challenge when designing. Many defects can impact this kind of room with, for example, a lack of brightness, a lack of ventilation or a feeling of suffocation, etc. However, by working on the layout of the space, decoration and lighting, the room can become more pleasant to live in and brighter. Discover, with Hoopzï, all our tips and advice for arranging this room.
Understanding the challenges of a windowless room
A windowless room, also known as a blind room, is defined by the absence of an opening to the outside. This room therefore benefits from no direct natural light.
Often criticized for its lack of light and ventilation, this room has a bad reputation and can be considered useless. Some people may feel uncomfortable or even suffocated. It's also important to know that the absence of an opening to the outside world can have an impact on the well-being and health of occupants (disruption of the internal clock, headaches, etc).
In addition, a windowless room can be a challenge when it comes to interior design. Indeed, by playing on space, thoughtful layout, decoration or the addition of light, the blind room can quickly become a useful, comfortable and pleasant room.
Tricks for maximizing natural light
Many tricks exist to optimize the layout of a windowless room and make it brighter:
The glass roof
This is the most effective solution when designing a windowless room. If you own your home and have the opportunity to carry out work, opening up the room with a glass roof is ideal. This solution, as well as being trendy, brings in natural light and a feeling of enlargement.
If it's a bedroom or a bathroom, the glass used can be worked to let in light while preserving privacy.
The glass or translucent door
Another solution, if it's impossible to break a wall to make a glass roof, the glass door can be considered. The trick is simple, just replace the door to the blind room with a glass door letting in natural light from the other rooms.
The skylight
A skylight is an excellent compromise. However, it's best not to be afraid of the work and to enlist the help of a building professional. Indeed, this involves making a hole in the ceiling of the room allowing light to be brought in vertically.
What are the best sources of artificial light?
Artificial light in a windowless room is essential, especially if it's a living space. It's important to think intelligently about where to place light fittings. A few tricks exist to make a windowless room pleasant to live in:
- The position of light fittings : if it's a living room, the light should be diffused and ideally not create any shadowy areas.
- The daylight bulb : this bulb can reflect daylight if it a color rendering index (CRI) close to 100.Hoopzi can advise you in your choice of bulbs.
- Varying sources : when designing a windowless room, such as an office for example, it's interesting to think about the positioning of light sources in order to modulate the lighting and vary thelight intensity with why not garlands or rolling lamps. Be careful, however, not to overdo it, as this can weigh down the space and maintain the sense of suffocation present in blind rooms.
- LED bulbs : these can be a good choice for this type of room, as they have the particularity of being able to stay on all day without consuming a lot of electricity.
Discover our lighting fixtures and accessories
Playing with color and textures
When you have a windowless room and the impossibility of doing major work, decorating the walls can be an effective and affordable trick. Wall color can make a clear difference in terms of brightness. Light, bright colors, such as beige or white, are to be preferred: they will, in fact, reflect artificial light, increasing brightness and enlarging the room.
Inversely, dark colors will accentuate the effect of darkness present in blind rooms.
By associating a light color with a wall with relief or a different texture, you can play on the contrast, the materials and this can give the feeling of enlarging the room. You can, for example, add wood or light bricks.
Another accessible trend when designing a windowless room is the addition of reflective materials. The mirror trick can be the quickest solution to set up, the cheapest, and therefore the simplest. Very useful when you're renting and can't carry out any work, the mirror will enlarge the room, reflect light, and thus limit the feeling of suffocation in blind rooms.
Illusion of space and light
By matching the colors and texture of the walls in windowless rooms, the use of natural elements can also play on the brightness of the room and compensate for this initial lack. The vegetal touch, whether in the form of dry or artificial plants, will bring life and create a pleasant sensation. Creating wall art with outdoor landscapes can also be added to the decoration to thus give the illusion of being outdoors and, in fine, enlarge the blind room.
More and more designer lighting fixtures are appearing on the market, enabling different lighting to be set up, such as the ASYM floor lamp, for example. In the case of windowless rooms, some luminaires can be used to diffuse light indirectly. This is particularly the case with layered lighting, which reflects light onto the surface of the luminaire and onto the wall. In this way, the atmosphere of the room is enhanced, despite the absence of a window, making it more pleasant, soft and cocooning.
Integration of modern technology
Are all your fixtures in place? You can also play around with a dimmer switch. Installing it in place of the light switch, you simply play with a knob to decide how bright you want the lighting to be, according to your needs, all day long.
If you don't opt to add a dimmer instead of a simple switch, you can play around with connected bulbs. No need for electrical work for this option, a simple app on your phone lets you control the intensity or color of the bulb. Adjustable at any time, you can, with the help, of a voice command, lower the intensity to watch a movie for example.
Conclusion
As you can see, the presence of a windowless room, or blind room, is a real design challenge to get around the disadvantages of lack of light. Fortunately, many solutions exist and for all budgets. For do-it-yourself enthusiasts, it's a good idea to do some renovation work to bring in natural light. For decorating enthusiasts, the use and arrangement of artificial lights and the installation of decorative wall elements will enable you to furnish the blind room. For technology enthusiasts, the use of connected lights and home automation is ideal. Of course, you're allowed to use all these tricks at once.
L'Équipe Hoopzi.
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