Illuminated Living

By Domitilla Lepri

One of Shanghai’s best interior designers shares tips and insight into the secrets of her profession.

As an interior decorator, one of the biggest challenges I continually face is proper illumination. It’s important to have homes with warm and comfortable illumination, particularly in a city like Shanghai, where during the winter the sun sets quite early.

It’s incredible how much the type of illumination can change the feel of your apartment, depending on the position, style and the colour of your light source; your room will look totally different. There are many different options, with more and more light sources of different colours, intensity and shapes coming on the market everyday.

Personally, I prefer rooms with light coming from below, therefore I am not very keen in using ceiling lights (unless it’s for a decorative purpose, and in that case without a light bulb inside) or wall appliqués.

However there are some exceptions to this rule and in some rooms you will be need to use illumination from above. The most obvious being the dining room, where you definitely need a lamp on the table. What I suggest is to drop the ceiling lamps as much as possible toward the table – in this way the light will not come from the higher part of the room – and add other floor lamps in the room in order to modulate the illumination. You can also try to use halogen spot lights; they are less decorative but provide a nice light.

The other two rooms where you will need to have an illumination from above are the bathrooms and the kitchen. Bathrooms need a good top-down illumination and usually a light on the mirror, but if your bathroom is big enough you can also use a table lamp or two to add style. The kitchen is a work place, consequently it needs to have a strong illumination; use as many lamps or spot lights as possible, on the ceiling and under any hanging cabinets.

Any other room can be treated differently. Use table and floor lamps in large quantities and with adjustable light intensities. Don’t forget to put several different light sources in order to modulate the light quantity depending on the occasion. Your interior should be cosy but also comfortable, allowing for you to have a range of light depending on the circumstance, especially in a studio/office or in the kid’s room for reading, studying, or playing.

Finally select your lamps carefully as they are an indispensable decorative object, that reflects your sense of style. Whatever style you are into, you can easily source lamps in Shanghai at antique markets, one of the several lamps markets, or furniture shops. Enjoy shopping!

Domitilla Lepri is the owner of Shanghai-based DL Architecture, a firm specialising in renovation and interior decoration. If you have an interior design question you’d like her to answer in a future column, please email her at [email protected].