26 Aug Ways To Increase The Natural Light In Your Home

There are several ways to increase the natural light in your home, but why is it important? Natural light on your skin causes your body to make Vitamin D. This is important for you as it helps keep teeth, bones and muscles healthy. As well as helping create Vitamin D, natural light has been associated with improving mental health and sleep. Getting as much natural light as you’d like can be tricky though, especially when we spend so much time indoors.

Allow us to share some of our favourite ways to increase the natural light in your home. This list includes a few easy and affordable solutions, as well as some with higher costs and effort.

Trim, clean and paint

One of the quickest and most effective ways to increase natural light in your home is to trim back any trees, shrubs or plants away from the windows. Keeping on top of nearby foliage growth will allow more light to enter the windows and doors.

Keeping your windows clean seems obvious but many of us don’t realise how dirty our windows are and don’t clean them as often as we could. In addition, keep your eaves or soffits on your roofline clean and regularly painted white. This allows the clean white surface to reflect more light into the rooms it is over.

Choose your curtains and colours carefully

Curtains are a popular window dressing treatment, but they can block out a lot of light. Consider having your curtain rails end further away from the windows to stop the hanging curtains blocking the light. You can also use frosted glass for privacy or use lighter materials to let the light through.

White and lighter colours reflect light and darker colours absorb light. This means having more white and light colours in your house can increase how bright it feels in a room. Think about adding highly polished or light-coloured tiles in your bathroom and kitchen to bring in more light. Shiny furniture, mirrors, and silver and glass accessories can all contribute to a brighter room.

Adding lighter colours in your décor will also help. Lighter flooring, walls and ceilings will all reflect the natural light around the room better than darker ones. Sometimes just moving furniture around will help. If you have a big bookcase blocking light getting to one part of the room, then moving the bookcase to another location will allow that light to get through.

Get more glass

To allow more direct natural light into your house consider having sun tunnels installed in your home. Sun tunnels, also known as solar tubes, are shapes cut into an exterior wall with a tube bringing light into a part of the house where there is less light. These can be from the ceiling or outside walls. These can be an especially effective way of bringing the benefits of skylights into your upper rooms through the attic.

Skylights are an excellent alternative however. A few years ago one could say skylights were really only for attic rooms however they are equally as useful with an extension, garage or a single storey room. It is popular now to have skylights in kitchens and living areas, increasing the amount of natural light.

Replacing wall space with glass is not just an impressive way to increase natural light, but also a bold decorating statement. Whether it’s internally or externally, glass sections of walls can have the function of doors or windows, or simply be a static glazed wall.

There is the option to install larger windows and doors in your home too. If you have the wall space, that can often be knocked through to put bigger windows in. Another option is to add glass panels either side of front and back doors. Making use of empty wall space by adding in a new window, instead of replacing all of them, will allow more light in too.

There are so many different ways to increase the amount of natural light in your home, some easier and more affordable than others. Whatever you do, you will see the difference immediately and be able to embrace the precious extra sunlight shining through. You can talk to us about options for windows and doors by getting in touch here.