Some Thoughts About Front Door Lighting
Posted on February 27, 2008
Filed Under Home Improvement |
Lighting at the front door is an absolute must. However, homeowners frequently make mistakes when lighting this area. This article is an attempt to provide some basic guidelines to help you plan the kind of illumination that provides both safety and a “nice look” for this “first impression” area of your home. Light colored doors and walls around your entryway will help by bouncing your lighting outward.
Front door lighting should provide sufficient illumination for the walkway and steps that lead to the door. It should help visitors find the doorbell or knocker and help you find the keyhole. If you have one than one entry near the front of your home, be sure that the main entry (the one you want people to use) has the brightest lights and the most elaborate fixtures and make sure that there is enough light so that you can see who your visitors are.
The house number should also be illuminated for those first-time visitors.
Spend a little extra and purchase attractive, warm, appealing light fixtures that send a “welcome” message to your visitors. It’s also important to put identical fixtures on either side of the front door. It’s a design thing that provides a sense of balance to your main entryway and makes it look a little larger than it actually is.
A common mistake homeowners make is using lights that are too bright. Bright lights make the adjacent areas dark and that isn’t very appealing. Too much light also creates glare, which causes the visitor some level of discomfort. Your goal is to strike just the right balance of brightness so that safety is insured as well as a warm inviting glow.
A rule of thumb is to use 120V incandescent lights with low wattage bulbs (around 40W) or 15W compact fluorescents. The compact fluorescent will last about 10 times longer than the incandescent bulbs and will use only about a third of the energy needed for the incandescent lights that would produce a comparable amount of light.
Front door lighting fixtures that use colored or frosted lenses are easier on the eye and are generally more appealing than clear glass lenses.
Post lanterns are sometimes used as an alternative to wall mounted fixtures but can provide somewhat of a challenge in terms of getting the fixture that will do the job of illuminating the front door area.
Another option is to add low wattage lights under the overhang above your front door to highlight features such as your house number or some other decorative feature that’s near the front door. Remember that this is a second layer of light that should not overpower your primary front door lighting.
A word of caution: Don’t overdo your lighting arrangement near the front door area. Remember that the goal of front door lighting is to get visitors to the door and so the design focus should always have this as its primary goal.
One of the advantages in planning lighting for the front door is that you can take a look at what other homeowners in your area have done in terms of front door lighting with very little effort and without needing to bother them. Chances are that you will come away will a bunch of good ideas.
Chuck Lunsford is the content manager for LightnBreezy.com, a well-known source for front door entrance lighting fixtures. LightnBreezy.com features hundreds of products to choose from. To order your discount lighting fixtures and ceiling fans made by Westinghouse, visit us at LightnBreezy.com.
Tags: front door lighting, home improvements, outside improvements, outside lighting fixtures
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