Benefits of Natural Light: How to brighten a dark room
When it comes to interior design, two of the most important elements to balance are practicality and style. Many design decisions rely on prioritising one over the other, but when it comes to bringing natural light into your home, there’s no need to worry about whether functionality or aesthetics needs to take precedence; natural light is essential to both.
Whether you’re starting a brand new home renovation project and need to learn how to brighten a dark room, or are tired of living in artificially-lit spaces and want to know more about the benefits of natural light, join the interior design experts at Gingerlily to learn more and get inspired.
Why is natural light important in a room?
Recognised by health professionals and interior designers alike as a vital part of any home, having access to natural light is essential to both your mental and physical health. Particularly important in living spaces, including home offices, living rooms and bedrooms, ensuring you spend plenty of your time during the day not just in the light, but under natural sunlight specifically, is one of the best known ways for boosting your mood, improving your productivity, and transforming your home into a space you love being in.
What are the benefits of natural light?
- Increases home value. A huge selling point for homes and apartments of all shapes and sizes, rooms which have easy access to natural light, whether through open-plan layouts or strategically-placed windows, are in high-demand for house hunters and renters.
- Enhances productivity. Capable of improving your ability to maintain focus over long periods of time, living and working in bright spaces is a great way to enhance your productivity.
- Boosts vitamin D production. An essential nutrient, giving your skin ample opportunities to absorb sunlight and produce vitamin D is key to improving your overall health. This is because vitamin D is responsible for regulating calcium and phosphate in the body, the nutrients which help to ensure bones, teeth and muscles stay healthy.
- Defends against seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Most commonly triggered by the shortening of the days, many people begin to feel the effects of SAD when the season turns from summer to autumn and winter. If you suffer from low moods on a seasonal cycle, extending your exposure to natural light whenever possible is a good way to reduce its impact.
- Acts as a natural disinfectant. An effective killer of germs, sunlight is one of the best natural disinfectants available. What’s more, it has also been shown to fend off mould and mildew, helping you keep your home clean and safe from harmful bacteria.
- Improves sleep cycle. Directly linked to our natural body clocks, exposing yourself to the natural rise and fall of the sun can help to develop a healthy sleep cycle.
Does natural light make you feel better?
The sum of its parts, all the various benefits of natural light in the home equate to one thing: it makes you feel better. From feeling more well-rested after building healthier sleeping and waking schedules, to getting a dopamine boost from accomplishing tasks thanks to heightened productivity levels, the overall effect of sunlight is living and feeling better.
How to get more light in a room
If you’re searching for how to get more light in a room, there are no shortage of lighting ideas, both common and bizarre, just waiting to be realised in your own space. From the clever placement of mirrors opposite sources of natural light to reflect sunlight into the house, to peppering your living spaces with ambient light sources such as cascading string lights and warm candles as alternatives to traditional artificial lighting, the possibilities are endless. As silk specialists, however, the team at Gingerlily are here to help you find clever ways to brighten your home using the luxurious and multi-functional fabric that is silk.
How to reflect sunlight into the house using silk
One of the most popular ways to brighten a dark room, manipulating the path of natural light through the home is a great way to ensure that spaces with fewer windows are washed in sunlight. Typically, interior designers will achieve this lightening effect by placing large mirrors in rooms with existing windows, positioning them at an angle to reflect the light into wall bump-outs and dark corners. At Gingerlily, however, we prefer using silk to reflect sunlight.
A beautiful fabric under any conditions, silk is particularly spectacular when placed in the sunlight due to its ability to reflect the light. Of course, silk doesn’t produce the same even wash of bright light in a room that mirrors do. This is partially because silk is more malleable and is usually displayed in sheets of rippling fabric as opposed to a tightly-flat sheet. Far from being a negative, this gives silk an almost iridescent natural shimmer which is endlessly more captivating than any mirror could produce.
If you’re looking to use silk’s shimmering optical effect in your own home, to enhance the lightscape of your bedroom or just to brighten it, a silk bedding set is the best way to do so. The easiest way to add a large expanse of the fabric to your room, silk bedding sets such as those in the Gingerlily collection can be easily and artfully draped across the bed to effortlessly transform the space. Even darker-toned sets, such as our Signature Navy collection, are dazzling under the sunlight, bringing a soft, lightening sheen, even as its rich colour brings its own darker tone.
How to brighten a dark room using silk
Another way to brighten a dark room is to make use of a light colour scheme, with the aim being to minimise any dark, light-absorbing colours. In particularly poorly-lit spaces, interior designers will choose to paint the walls white, only introducing pops of colour through the space to ensure that light is reflected, rather than absorbed.
When it comes to weaving bedding into a light colour scheme, selecting silk as the primary, or even sole, fabric is a great option. Not only will the natural shimmer of the silk catch and magnify the light, but the material’s lustrous shine will also help to make any chosen colour appear lighter, further reducing the amount of light absorbed.
At Gingerlily, we’ve spent years experimenting with colours and tones which bring a luxurious lightness to darker bedrooms, and one of our favourite schemes can be seen in our Signature Sage silk bedding collection. A prime example of silk’s lightening effect, the beautifully calm-green tone of our Sage bed linen catches any light in a space, natural or artificial, and reflects it, turning the colour of the bedding into a pale, shimmering green. As easily paired with bright, white walls as darker, rich wooden accents, creating a dynamic depth of colour and texture, without risking a dark overall feel, is made possible with silk.
Find luxury silk bedding at Gingerlily
Experience the benefits of natural light for yourself by transforming your home with silk bedding from Gingerlily. Spanning lustrous plain colour bedding from our Signature collection, to textured and patterned linen sets that make a statement, design a bright and beautiful space that makes you feel good.