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Tag: Kitchen Lighting

How to style orange lighting
Orange is one of those colours that people either love or hate, which is understandable because it can easily go very wrong in interior design. But the truth is, orange is a fantastic colour to incorporate into your decorating and lighting; you just have to get the shade right.

Orange can help invigorate or energise a room with a zesty, citrus flavour. Or softer, more muted tones like pastel orange or earthy tones like terracotta can bring a warm, sunny, calming vibe.

If you’re considering incorporating orange lighting in yoru home, this guide is for you. Learn about orange colour theory, how to use orange lighting in your interior, what rooms they work best in, what colours pair well with it and the best orange lighting options for your home.

Table of contents:
Orange colour theory

Orange can be a bold option, which can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be.

Historically, orange was associated with richness, warmth and opulence in ancient cultures and the Renaissance painting era. The early 20th century/ Art Deco era also favoured orange for its boldness, confidence, vibrancy, and youthfulness that rebelled against the past and looked to the future.

You can also see these associations in retro 70s culture mixed with paisley prints and flower power patterns.

Today, orange creates a sense of warmth and brightness as feature walls or accent pieces are set against neutral tones for balance or contrasted against bold complementary colours for a contemporary, eclectic feel.

Here’s how to use orange lighting in your home.

Make a statement

Orange is bright, bold, and a great way to make a loud design statment. Choose a bold orange pendant light for a stunning statement piece in the centre of your ceiling. The zesty colour will draw the eye and get your guests talking.

Add a pop of colour

If you don’t like the idea of an orange lighting piece taking over a room, a small orange lamp is a great way to incorporate the invigorating colour to subtly add a pop of colour to your home.

Soft and subtle

Orange can also be soft and subtle. Take a burnt orange or a terracotta shade to bring warm Mediterranean tones to your home. Very pale pastel orange on a table lamp base can also have a soft and subtle feel, bringing a sense of calm to your interior.

But where should you put your orange lighting? Read on to discover the best room for orange lights.

Orange lighting in bedrooms

A bedroom is a great place to add these calming orange tones to your home. The warm hues will create the perfect warming sanctuary that embodies a relaxing sunset. The warmer side of the light spectrum will also positively impact your sleep cycle as the warm tones will help you drift off to sleep. Don’t forget to pair your orange light with a warm-white or amber light bulb to enhance the warm tones of the orange light, perfect for creating a relaxing atmosphere before bed.

Orange lighting in living rooms

Inject an element of your personality by adding orange lighting into your living room. The warm, fun colour is perfect, especially if you want to brighten up a north-facing living room or live in a dull, wet climate.

Orange lighting in kitchens and dining rooms

Kitchens are also fantastic places to incorporate orange. The zesty citrus tones of orange lighting are meant to look good enough to eat and bring a refreshing atmosphere to your kitchen.

Here are some of the best lighting options in orange to inspire your interior design.

Orange table lamps

Big, bold table lamps with big ball ceramic bases offer a real presence in your home. Whether acting as a pop of colour in your living room or brightening the end of a console table, they are worth placing centre stage. Experiment with modern and retro shapes to suit your preferred style, drawing on those groovy 70s vibes or futuristic sculptures. Orange table lamps are ideal as statement pieces against a neutral background or complementing a vibrant colour scheme.

Orange pendant and ceiling lights

The orange pendants or ceiling lights can make a bold statement in any room, especially when mixed with interesting textures and materials to add interest. These 3 light cluster ceiling pendant lights with orange, green and beige glass shades offer an earthy, bohemian, very on-trend look.

Orange lampshades

Any lamp with an orange lampshade will create a warming hue. You can choose from luxurious silk to brassy velour or saffron-esque cotton in many styles, materials and finishes. Why go plain when you can choose a lampshade with orange patterns that stands as a work of art?

What colour goes with orange?

You can’t just have orange, orange, orange! If you’re redecorating and want to incorporate orange lighting, here is a list of the best colours that go with orange for a comprehensive interior design. Or, if you already have a certain interior colour scheme, find out if orange will work in your existing interior.

Neutrals

As orange can be a strong colour, complement it with neutral tones. Greys, taupes, whites and beiges will balance out the bold orange colour and create a sense of harmony. The combination will create a modern, classic interior design.

Bold and deep blues and greens

Alternatively, if you love bold colours and the eclectic maximalist interior look, pair your orange lights with opposite colours on the colour wheel, like navy blues and emerald greens. These will create a contrast and really make the orange pop. Play around with texture, pattern and fabrics for more eccentric interior design ideas.

Paired with lighter shades like sage or turquoise will transport you to fresh, sunny climes.

Black, brown and red

We’ve talked a lot about summer capri sun vibes and warm summer sunsets in the Mediterranean, but what about our autumn girlies? Orange, of course is one of the main colours of Halloween after all. Pair your orange lights with black for an even bolder, striking contrast and moody aesthetic. Dark earthy browns and reds will also create a cosy autumnal vibe in your home. Take a look at this adorable mushroom-shaped orange light, perfect for Halloween.

Gold metallics

When paired with gold metals, orange lights can create a more industrial feel. Or a sense of that historical opulence from ancient times.

Yellow

Pairing orange lighting with yellow or similar shades on the colour wheel will create a warm, cheerful, sunny feel. Alternatively, mustards and dirty oranges will give you more of an autumnal vibe.

Pink

Often thought of as a clashing colour with orange, pink will provide a fun, playful and youthful tone when paired with orange. Perfect for a child’s bedroom.

Orange lights at Castlegate Lights

We hope you feel confident incorporating the very underrated colour orange into your lighting scheme. Whether you want to inject energy and zest into your home or create warm, sunny vibes, orange is more versatile than you think.

Get more interior design inspiration from our orange lighting collection at Castlegate Lights.

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- Halloween lighting
August 2, 2024
The different types of kitchen lights and when you need them
Choosing kitchen lighting can be overwhelming with so many kitchen light fittings and design options to browse. If you’re in the process of choosing your kitchen lighting design, we’re here to help!

In this guide, we will outline all the different types of kitchen lights you can choose and when and where it’s best to use them to help you find the perfect lights that work for you in your kitchen.

Table of contents
Kitchen ceiling lights

The Italian Collection Lana Single Light Ceiling Pendant in a Chrome Finish With White Glass

Kitchen ceiling lights are the most common and typical way to light your kitchen. If you’re unsure where to start planning your kitchen lighting, ceiling lights are an excellent place to begin. They usually provide general ambient light to the entire room, which is necessary to see and conduct everyday tasks. Here are the different ceiling lights you can choose.

Pendants

The Italian Collection Milk Single Light Ceiling Pendant in White Finish

Pendant lights are a fantastic way to light your kitchen, especially if you have a kitchen island or dining table in your kitchen. Use a pendant light to provide ambient lighting to the whole room by installing it in the middle of the ceiling. Using a pendant light in the centre of the room can also act as a beautiful centrepiece, especially if you opt for an unusual design piece. Or, use it to highlight a feature like a kitchen island or dining table slightly off-centre.

Flush ceiling lights

The Italian Collection Ovalino 8 Light Flush Ceiling Fitting In Chrome Finish With White Glass

Flush ceiling lights are also a great way to illuminate your kitchen, particularly if you have a low ceiling, where a pendant light would be impractical. Many flush ceiling lights can still be beautiful room centrepieces with intricate or stylish designs.

Chandeliers

Dar Lighting Dar Nadria 6 Light Chandelier in Satin Gold Finish

Although not a typical choice for kitchen lighting, if you have a grand traditional kitchen or want to make a bold statement, you could add a chandelier to wow your guests.

Spotlights

The Italian Collection Oby 3 Light LED Spotlight Bar In Matt White And Chrome Finish

Spotlights are an excellent ceiling light option for kitchens due to their bright LED bulbs, focused, directional light and adjustable heads. As your kitchen is a high-activity area, you need sufficient task lighting to do your daily jobs, like cleaning, prepping food and cooking.

Spotlights offer excellent kitchen worktop lighting because you can direct the light beams to where you work most frequently. You can also prevent shadows from forming on your work surfaces by using kitchen spotlights. Choose between single spotlights or multiple, depending on how much and where you need the light.

Downlights

The Italian Collection Mood Square Large Flush Ceiling Fitting in White And Black Finish

Downlights offer many of the same advantages as spotlights. They provide focused, adjustable beams to where you need them most, but they are more discreet than spotlights. Often recessed into the ceiling, downlights offer a minimalist modern look, perfect if you have a contemporary kitchen interior design.

Track lights

Lucide Nigel 1 Circuit Track Spot Light In Black Finish

If you’re looking for a modern, flexible lighting alternative, you can always look at track lighting. To install track lights, you need to install tracks onto the ceiling and then fit your lights. These lights get energy from the tracks, but you can fully adjust and move them, giving you the ultimate freedom to change your lighting design to your heart’s content.

Use track lights over your kitchen table, island or worksurfaces for focused and adjustable task lighting that is ultra-modern with a hint of industrial chic.

Kitchen wall lights

Dar Lighting Dar Abel Single Light Wall Fitting In Satin Black And Brass Finish

If you don’t want a looming ceiling light in the centre of your kitchen, wall lights are an excellent alternative. Dot these around your kitchen walls to create ambient light throughout the room. Whether you enjoy wall sconces, lanterns, up and down lights or flush wall lights, choose lights that reflect your kitchen style.

Spotlights

The Italian Collection Alfa Single Light Wall Spotlight in Satin Nickel Finish

A trendy kitchen wall light option is wall spotlights. Attach them to the walls to illuminate work surfaces more clearly, and install them where you need the most light.

Under-cupboard kitchen lights

Under-cupboard kitchen lights are a sleek and modern way to illuminate your kitchen. As an accent light type, under-cupboard kitchen lights sit underneath your kitchen cabinets and light the space below.

You can install this lighting type to illuminate a dark work surface or the sink area shadowed by the cabinets, offering a practical light solution. Or, set it underneath your floor-level cabinets for a futuristic glow on the floor. Use these lights to create an ultra-modern aesthetic in your kitchen.

Kitchen floor lighting

Selected by Lyco Square Recessed Ground Light in Stainless Steel Finish

Who’s to say that walkover lights are exclusively for the outside? Why not use walkover lights to highlight your kitchen cupboards or island from the floor? Use uplighting techniques to highlight your kitchen furniture and create a unique, ultra-modern lighting design.

Kitchen shelf lamps

BHS Lighting BHS Tizzo Retro Single Light Ceramic Table Lamp In Cobalt Blue Finish

If you’re interested in trending lighting, we’ve seen people using tiny lamps to decorate their kitchen shelves. To create an aesthetically pleasing kitchen environment, interior designer influencers have placed a lamp (or two) on their kitchen shelves next to their cookbooks, pasta jars, house plants and other kitchenware.

The effect is subtle, homely and comforting, providing accent lighting to atypical places. Recreate this look with a little lamp from our kitchen lamps at Castlegate Lights.

Kitchen Lighting at Castlegate Lights

Remember, the perfect lighting scheme relies on lighting layers. You will need ambient lights to illuminate the whole room, task lights to help you see and complete tasks and accent lighting to highlight your favourite features and unleash your creative side. Use a selection of these lighting types to complete your kitchen lighting.

Hopefully, our guide has helped you decide what lighting you want to utilise in your kitchen. Now, you can choose what light fittings best suit your interior aesthetic. Browse our kitchen lighting to find the perfect lights for your kitchen interior. We have many styles, from modern to traditional, industrial chic to Scandinavian, to cater to your individual taste.

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February 5, 2024
How to light a kitchen island in 6 easy ways
The kitchen is the heart of the household. It’s where you cook, eat and spend time with family and friends. So, if you’re lucky enough to have a beautiful kitchen island in an open-plan kitchen, don’t keep it in the dark!

Kitchen lighting, especially lighting for your island, is essential to get right as it should function as task lighting for meal preparation but also create the right atmosphere for socialising and enjoying meals together.

Kitchens need to function with adequate lighting, but that doesn’t mean your lighting has to be glaring and ugly. Here are six ways to light your kitchen island to provide functional lighting for cooking, cleaning and socialising that also looks stunning.

Table of contents
Pendant lights

Pendant lights are a fantastic way to illuminate your kitchen island. If they have a shade, they provide concentrated task lighting to the island to help you see what you’re doing. Alternatively, you can choose a more open pendant light for general ambient lighting.

In addition to providing practical lighting, a pendant light over an island can contribute to the interior design of your kitchen. As they usually hang low and are in the middle of the room, highlighting the primary workspace of the kitchen, it can be the first thing people see when they walk into the kitchen. Therefore, you want the centrepiece of the room to look stylish.

If you want your pendant light to be an eye-catching design choice that draws the eye and sparks interest, consider an extravagant or innovative design that looks unique. Or, go big to make a bold statement with an oversized pendant light.

Size also matters. The size and shape of your kitchen island will determine how many pendant lights you need to illuminate it sufficiently. If you have a smaller or square kitchen island, you may want to opt for a singular statement pendant light.

Or, if you have a large island or it’s more rectangular, you can create a very eye-catching look by following the rule of three. Suspend three pendant lights in a row above your kitchen island for a dramatic triplet effect. You can also find pendant light fixtures with multiple lights in one fitting to achieve this impactful look.

Whether you have a country-style kitchen, an industrial-chic interior or an ultra-modern aesthetic, there are hundreds of kitchen island lighting options in our pendant lights collection here at Castlegate Lights.

How low should a pendant light hang?

We recommend suspending your pendant light with a 76-91cm gap between the light and the kitchen island. However, there is some room for creative licence; the lower the lamp, the more dramatic the lighting effect.

However, you still want to maintain a functional workspace. The lower the lamp is, the more concentrated the beam will be, diminishing the ambient light to the rest of the kitchen and creating more shadows on the countertop.

Furthermore, you don’t want the height of the pendant lights over the island to interfere with your work. Hang the pendant light too low, and you could knock it with your hands or head.

Chandeliers

Similarly to pendant lights, a chandelier can illuminate your kitchen island surface, provide task lighting and add elegance and grandeur to your kitchen.

Chandeliers provide an eye-catching statement piece in the centre of your kitchen, perfect for highlighting the central kitchen island. Whether you have an industrial-style kitchen with brass fixings or an elegant French country-style kitchen, we offer a range of chandeliers to match your kitchen aesthetic.

Spotlights

There are other ways to illuminate your kitchen island if you don’t like the idea of a protruding hanging pendant light in the middle of your kitchen. For example, spotlights are a sleek and subtle way to illuminate your kitchen island.

We offer a selection of spotlight light fittings, depending on the size of your island and where you want to illuminate. From single spotlights to multiple spotlights mounted on a bar, you can adjust spotlights to point where you need the light most on your kitchen island. For larger kitchen islands, choose a longer spotlight bar to illuminate the entire space.

Downlights

Downlights are another excellent way to illuminate your kitchen island. They will allow you to see what you’re doing, whether cooking up a storm or serving drinks to guests, by providing bright, direct light.

Strategically place a selection of downlights above your kitchen island to get the light you need to complete your daily tasks. Or, use adjustable downlights to point light beams towards your high-work areas.

Downlights offer practical yet clean and minimalist lighting, perfect for a modern kitchen interior.

Track Lighting

Another contemporary way to illuminate your kitchen island is to add track lighting. Track lighting consists of a ceiling-mounted track which supplies an electric current to the track lights. The lights slot into the track. And because they aren’t attached, you can fully adjust their position and direction to suit your needs at any time.

Track lighting has a contemporary, industrial aesthetic, meaning it blends well in a modern kitchen design.

Under-cabinet Lighting

Lighting your kitchen island doesn’t have to be purely functional. Add light layers to your island by highlighting the underside of the countertop to create a futuristic glow.

Under-cabinet lighting around the island can add depth to your kitchen, and when you finish cooking or socialising, leave the light on to create a cosy atmosphere.

Kitchen island lighting at Castlegate Lights

Kitchen island lighting is primarily functional. It helps you see what you’re doing while cooking, eating and socialising, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring.

Create an eye-catching centrepiece with a pendant light or chandelier suspended above the worktop and create a focal point around the room’s centre. Or, if you have a modern kitchen, use spotlights or downlights to illuminate your kitchen island with bright adjustable beams.

Whether you have a modern kitchen aesthetic or a vintage interior, you can find hundreds of kitchen lights in our collection to beautifully illuminate your kitchen island at Castlegate Lights.

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November 3, 2023
Shedding Light on Kitchen Lighting

When designing a new kitchen lighting is usually the last thing you think about, but to create the perfect design giving your kitchen character and atmosphere it should be properly lit. Light is not just for function but is an integral part of aesthetics and can transform your kitchen from a slum to a tranquil, exceptionally soothing haven. Here at Castlegate we offer a wide range of in kitchen lighting which will create a warm glow that fills a room, softens shadows and helps to make people feel instantly welcome in your kitchen. Not only do we offer you fantastic lighting which will revolutionise your kitchen but we give you all this for unbelievable low prices.

So why not take a look?

July 12, 2010