Living Room Wall Lights

Where to put wall lights in a living room

Start with where people sit rather than with the wall. The positions that usually work are a matched pair either side of the sofa, a pair framing a mirror on the chimney breast, small fittings in the alcoves beside it and a single light beside a reading chair. On a long, bare wall, a row of evenly spaced lights keeps the far side of the room from falling into shadow.

Take care around the television: a light beside the screen sits in your eye line while you watch, and one on the wall opposite can reflect in it, so in both places choose a fitting that hides the bulb.

Living room wall lights and the view from the sofa

In a living room you see the wall lights from a seat, with your eyes a little over a metre from the floor, so you look up at the underside of the fitting. If that underside is open, the bare bulb shows; a glass, fabric or alabaster diffuser, or a shade closed at the base, keeps the glow and loses the glare.

Over a sofa, fit the lights with their centres around 150cm to 165cm from the floor, clear of a head leaning back. A reading light beside a chair goes lower, with the bottom of the shade just above a seated shoulder and slightly behind it, so the light lands on the book rather than in the eyes.

Choosing living room wall lights by the job they do

Most of our living room wall lights are ambient fittings, there to wash the walls and set the level of the room. For that job the shape of the light matters more than its strength: up-and-down fittings, of which we stock many, throw a band both ways and make the ceiling feel higher, while shaded fittings give a rounder glow around the seating.

We also stock many accent wall lights, for shelves in an alcove, a painting or a plant, and many task lights for a reading chair. Give these jobs to different fittings, because a light bright enough to read by is too bright to relax under.

Putting living room wall lights on their own switch

Wall lights earn their place in the evening, when the ceiling light feels flat and harsh, so wire them to a switch of their own. Then either can be on without the other, and in a room with two doors, a switch at each saves crossing it in the dark. Put a dimmer on that switch if you can: full light for tidying up, a low glow for a film.

Many of our living room wall lights are dimmable, but not all, so check the listing and use a dimmer suited to LED loads. Many have integrated LEDs, and many others take an E14, E27 or G9 bulb; to dim one of those, the bulb must be dimmable too.

Living room wall lights alongside floor and table lamps

Wall lights need not match the ceiling light, floor lamp and table lamps around them, but they should agree. Repeat one metal, so brass wall lights sit with a brass lamp base or mirror frame. We stock living room wall lights in brass, white, black, silver, gold, chrome and nickel finishes, so it is easy to echo something already in the room.

The colour of the light matters more than the finish. A cool white wall light beside warm table lamps looks patchy, so match the colour temperature across the room; in a living room that usually means warm white, and many of ours are. Some let you change it, which helps if the room doubles as a study.

How big living room wall lights should be

Living room walls are often wider than walls elsewhere in the house, and small fittings either side of a long sofa or a broad chimney breast can look lost. Before drilling, cut a paper template to the fitting's measurements, tape it up and judge it from the sofa and the doorway.

Our living room wall lights run from small to extra-large, and most are single-light fittings; for a long wall or a high ceiling we also stock fittings with two, three or more lights. Check the projection too: behind a sofa it rarely matters, but beside a doorway or the path through the room, a deep fitting catches shoulders.

Adding wall lights to a living room that has none

If your living room was wired for a ceiling light and sockets only, a hard-wired wall light needs a cable run to its position, usually from the lighting circuit. That is work for a qualified electrician, best done before you decorate, because chasing the cable in marks the plaster. In England and Wales it comes under Part P of the Building Regulations, and a registered electrician can tell you whether the job needs notifying.

Where you cannot chase the walls, as in a rented flat, we stock a few plug-in wall lights, which run from a socket, and some rechargeable ones. They suit a reading corner or a single alcove better than a whole wall of lights.