Shine on 2024: Brighten Up Your Interiors for the New Year
As we enter 2024, many of us will be looking for ways to start the year on a positive footing. With your new health and fitness routine in place, perhaps it’s also time to refresh interiors with new lights, features, and creative ideas that might literally make your home shine.
Whether it's with a savvy use of designer lights, or well-positioned mirrors with on-trend paints that breathe new life into your home, there are stylish ways to welcome natural light into your homes for an inviting new year.
This article explores the 2024 design trends in lighting and other interiors tips, to transform tired spaces into bright and rejuvenated rooms.
Be Creative to Illuminate Spaces
If you want to give interiors an instant makeover and brighten them up, planning where to position any light fixtures and fittings in your home is important. Being creative with lighting will work wonders to illuminate your home in the best way possible.
Once you get past having bog-standard ceiling lights and shades, you can make some small tweaks to bring brightness into every corner of your home. By adding a dimmer switch, and investing in some snazzy lamps, cool pendants, and other decorative light fittings, you’ll see brightening results in no time at all.
Once you have upgraded your lights or invested in dimmers for those spotlights, be more creative by redirecting lights to areas of the room or spaces in the home where you need light most.
The right selection and placement can transform dim and dull spaces into bright, welcoming interiors.
Use pendant lights over kitchen islands, and adjustable spotlights to minimise shadows between the island and the cabinets across (image 1).
In your lounge, bedrooms, or hall, be mindful of where you place table lamps for visual interest and use colourful smart lights and unique bulbs to impress (image 2).
Position lamps and lights strategically in bedrooms, staircases or on walls, to highlight special wall art (image 3).
You can then mix and match fittings to suit your home's colour palette and overall decor (image 6).
Image 1 - @JennyKakoudakis
Draw in Streams of Natural Light
One of the simplest ways to brighten up any room is to maximise the amount of natural light that floods in. While this will vary according to how many doors, skylights, and windows you have, you can take advantage of where these are all positioned to draw in those sources of natural light across your home.
How to increase the natural light in any room
Heavy curtains and closed shutters will block out light, as will large furniture or overgrown plants. If your home has lots of rooms with small windows, hang lightweight curtains, adjust shutter gaps or buy pale shades of blinds in light colours, to encourage the best flow of light.
Use reflective surfaces and mirrors that will enhance the aesthetics of your home and add a magical touch for the illusion of extra light and space.
Likewise, opting for glass over solid walls where you can will help you to channel natural light into your home and brighten up interiors.
Image 2- @JennyKakoudakis
Select Paint Colours That Lighten Rooms
To embrace the new year, choose on-trend paint colours for some inspiration to help your rooms feel refreshed.
A fresh coat of paint can make a huge impact in brightening up your interiors. The right colour palette, therefore, can transform any of your rooms into a brighter and lighter home.
If you prefer brilliant white or have a theme in mind for the main walls, bright choices like cloud white, almond wisp and linen white reflect light beautifully. Alternatively, soft pastels like blush pink, pale yellow, ammonite greys and duck egg blues work well.
Whites, light greys or pastels will also disperse natural light rather than absorb it, while reflective paints are designed to bounce light around. For example, in a dark hallway or bedroom, light reflective paint can amplify brightness.
If you need some additional support, there are colour consultants with the most up-to-date knowledge to help you nail the home decor of your dreams in 2024.
Paint ceilings in a lighter colour than walls since light colours lift the eye upward and make rooms feel more expansive. A light blue or soft white ceiling makes for an ideal bright canvas overhead, and light colours will deliver an airy feel as well as catch and reflect light.
Image 3 - JennyKakoudakis
Image 4 - JennyKakoudakis
Experiment with Lighting for Extra Ambience
Lighting done well always has the incredible power to transform interiors and influence your mood in a positive way, which is exactly what you’re after at the start of 2024. Therefore, don’t be afraid to experiment with layers of light to create new designs and ambience.
Work from Home - Task Lights
If you work from home, adjustable desk lamps can be great for controlling lighting when you’re busy. When it’s time to relax, read and unwind, playing around with where you place table and floor lamps in your lounge can help to recraft a cosy space.
This is especially important when you do not have a dedicated room as your office and instead use a common area (usually in the kitchen or lounge) to work.
Lighting Choices in Loft, Garage or Basement Conversions
Likewise, if you have recently converted a loft room, garage, or basement, you'll want to experiment with different types of lights as well as layers of adjustable ceiling lights or floor lamps to accommodate everything you’ll be doing in these spaces, from hobbies or work to exercising and socialising.
Image 5 - SHOP THE LOOK - 1 and 6 - Abigail Ahern | 2 and 4, Lightsandlamps.com | 3 and 5, Spark and Bell.
The 2024 trends in Lighting
Lighting enables you to customise any space to suit the mood and activities you want to enjoy there. There are a myriad of lighting options for every dark corner of your property that can work well to brighten up rooms in creative ways.
Materials we love
Luxurious materials like mixed metals (used in the Elle Decoration collaboration with Lights and Lamps) and colourful marbles (like the pink marble wall lights by Brighton-based Spark and Bell) are feeding our 2024 lighting dreams.
Will colourful Lighting Fiixtures be big in 2024?
We think so! Look no further than the collaboration between Emma Gurner and House Of which introduced vibrant greens and playful coral reds, complete with pleats!
Image 6 - All lights are from House of
With darker wintry months behind you, tricks to lighten your interiors can help you look brightly ahead. Clever lighting choices, strategic ways to attract more natural light as well as reflective paint with splashes of gloss or paler colours can transform any space with illuminating brilliance.
Likewise, by lifting your interiors, you can lift your mood for a warmer and welcoming home that reflects your positivity for the year ahead.
