NATURAL LIGHT & COLORS IN YOUR HOME

Natural light is an aspect which determines the quality of light in daytime in your home. Generally as per sun movement, if your home has windows facing North, you will have an ambient natural light but sun rays may not enter your home. If your home has windows facing south or west, you will get sun rays inside your home. If your home has windows towards east , you will get sun rays only in morning. So before deciding which side to buy the home, it will be wiser to understand the orientation factor. Many a times in apartment blocks, some rooms open towards the duct, mostly kitchens. A duct in a tall building will not bring natural light in the room as duct will be always in shadows. In a situation like if few internal walls are avoided, you can get Natural light coming from the other face which has windows. Recently we customized an apartment for our friend Ar. Jaineel Trivedi. He had bought a wonderful apartment in Kondwa with a large terrace next to Living room. As he also is an Iskon devotee, he has regular ‘kirtans’ in his house. Hence he wanted to merge his terrace in the living room, so that more people can use the outside space for sitting on occasions when his living room will be full. The original pattern of a window & small door to enter the living room was changed to accommodate a large glazed door. 

Original wall pattern of Window & door to terrace

Large glazed door connecting Living room to Terrace

Though his interior work is still in progress, you can see in the comparable photographs above how the light quality increases. 

His kitchen has less light because it opens in a duct. Here we have used white tiles all over the walls so that whatever light comes in reflects.

Use of colour in Interiors depends totally on two principle facts:

1) What is the size of the room – If you use dark colors in a small size room, the room will appear smaller & vice versa. Many a times people ask carpenters to apply dark polish on all furniture items or purchase objects of dark color for their rooms. Dark polish & dark color laminates will make your rooms look smaller in size.

Small kitchen with light colors

2) The quality of natural light  in the room – Bright colors usually bring a cheerful mood. Colors like Red & Blue look great only if the walls on which they are applied have enough natural light falling on it. Otherwise they will appear blackish on dark lit walls.   Yellow or Orange , due to more wave lengths can look good even though applied on walls with less natural light.

A house where we highlighted a wall in Living room which made
the entire environment cheerful

Living space in a house, where the combination of
 Yellow & Orange changed the feel of Space

Simple strategy for our houses with mid size or small rooms will be – Have Plenty of Natural light & have very light colors for walls & furniture. Use colors only to highlight  a wall .