How to Style LED Downlights

Downlights are a classic and minimal way to light your home. And, as we’ll see, downlights aren’t just on the living room ceiling. I teamed up with downlight experts, The Lighting Outlet, to find out just how to style downlights to maximum effect.

LED Downlights

First things first, for downlights, we always recommend using LEDs, as these will last a lot longer and are energy-saving as well.

The only downside to LED downlights, is that they use lumens not traditional watts to measure output. To convert lumens to watts check out this article ‘How to Choose The Right Downlight’. Otherwise, here are the three main ways to style your downlights.  

Downlights As General Lighting

This is probably the most common way you’ve seen downlights used in homes. Their recessed nature means they take up no space yet provide wide beams of ambient light to the room. A pro-tip here is to keep the downlight beam away from the ceiling fan, to prevent a flickering effect from occurring when the fan is turned on.

The above photo shows a typical use of ceiling downlights in a common room area. Notice how the downlights don’t quite form a grid pattern – this is to make it more natural and less commercial looking for the home.

Downlights As Accent & Wall-Wash Lighting

Downlights are great because they’re so versatile and can be used for special purpose spotlighting to show off sculptures and displays.

Downlights are also perfect for task lighting in kitchens and bathrooms. Downlights with adjustable tilts make it easy to target the dark corners and surfaces.

Track Lighting

Last, but certainly not least, recessed downlights can have the same effect as track lights in narrow spaces, such as corridors, and can be used to indicate a pathway easily. Test this out for your home, you’ll love the effect!

Images – Guilherme Torres