How to Create a Layered Lighting Scheme for a Dining Room

When you’re renovating your home, you should be focusing on your lighting plan from the get-go. There are a lot of lighting options out there and it can feel overwhelming, but by keeping a few simple tricks and rules in mind, you’ll have a well-lit space. Learn how to create a layered lighting scheme for a dining room in this House & Home video:

The first thing to think about is pot or recessed lighting. Take your room and break it down into a grid. If you “google” pot light spacing, you’ll come across several recommendations. Usually people will say leave 3-5 feet between your pot lights or leave 4-6 feet between your pot lights, but 4-5 feet is a happy medium. The other thing to bear in mind is spacing away from a wall. You don’t want to place your pot light too close against a wall because you will get a ton of shine on the wall and not a lot of light in the room, so a bare minimum set out from the wall would be about 18 inches (2 feet is better).

The dining room featured in this video is 12 ft x 16-1/2 ft. With a goal of 4-5 feet between pot lights, the design grid is 3 pot lights by 4 pot lights and is centered on the table and in the room. You would probably want a pendant over the dining room table, however, so you need to make an adjustment on the grid depending on the size and shape of that pendant, which might be a classic chandelier or a modern elongated fixture. Two pot lights in front of the fireplace are replaced with gimbal art lights centered on the fireplace; they should be spaced one foot away from the wall and two feet apart. All of your lighting should be on dimmers. In the final lighting plan, the pot lighting goes around the perimeter, with two along each end and two on either side of the art lights. Decorative sconces on either side complete the look.