Create the Right Mood this Valentine’s Day with LED Mood Lighting

As our recent research discovered, most Brits will be staying-in this Valentine’s Day, so it’s important to know how you can create a romantic atmosphere in your home. When it comes to setting a romantic mood in a room, lighting has the biggest impact. The right lighting will help you to relax at the end of a long day and simply enjoy your partner’s company. In this article we’ll take a look at the basic ways to create mood lighting (largely with LEDs of course!) and then apply the techniques to specific rooms: The dining room, the living room and the bedroom.

How to create LED mood lighting

Getting mood lighting right is all about control (and not in a bad way!). As a minimum, you need to be able to adjust the brightness, and dimmable LEDs in warm-white are great for this. You can get dimmable lighting in the form of spotlights, bulbs and strip lights; so the type of light fittings you currently have won’t be a restriction. Just bear in mind that your dimmer switch needs to be compatible with dimmable LEDs, and certain types of spotlight need a transformer.

Mood lighting without a dimmer switch

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule! If you don’t have the setup to use dimmable LEDs and you don’t want to install a new dimmer switch, then LED filament bulbs can be used in lamps and light fittings to create a romantic mood. The exposed filament set inside an amber bulb creates a soft, warm glow at a low wattage, and the bulbs are attractive in their own right, enhancing the atmosphere even more.

Change the atmosphere with Smart Lighting

If you want to take your mood lighting to the next level then smart lighting is the way to go. Smart lighting gives you total control and flexibility over your lighting, allowing you to easily adjust the brightness, colour temperature and colour of your lighting quickly and easily. You can also pre-programme specific moods and activate them at the touch of a button. At LED Hut we supply smart lighting from four manufacturers, each slightly different…

Philips Hue

Philips Hue is one of the original pioneers of smart lighting, and their Hue range is extensive, high quality, easy to use and totally flexible.

Nanoleaf

Nanoleaf is a green technology company founded in 2012. As well as using smart lighting technology in their light panels and bulbs, they have designed them to look good as well, so you get two benefits for the price of one!

iDual

The big advantage of iDual is that unlike Hue and Nanoleaf, you don’t need a central hub or controller to run your smart lights, so they’re cheaper to get started with. The trade-off is that you don’t get the same level of control and functionality as you get with the other two products.

WiZ

WiZ sits in the middle between Hue/Nanoleaf and iDual. You don’t need a hub to run WiZ lights, but you can still control them through your WiFi via an app on your phone, which is an advantage over iDual that requires you to use the iDual remote. Right, that’s enough background. Let’s look at some specific ways you can create mood lighting this Valentine’s Day!

Mood lighting for the dining room

For the dining room, you want to create an atmosphere that is cosy and intimate. Think candlelit dinners with warm lighting set to a low level. This can be achieved easily with warm white dimmable bulbs or smart lighting, and of course a nice candle on the table!

Mood lighting when you move to the living room

In the living room you’ll probably have more space, which requires a different approach. Whereas a dining room can often be lit romantically with a single bulb and some candles, you may need to put a bit more effort into the living room. If your living room has lamps, consider LED filament bulbs to provide the light and leave the main light switched off. You could also use smart lighting on a red/orange fireplace light setting or a dark, soft purple; and there’s nothing to stop you bringing the candles in from the dining room or lighting some more.

Mood lighting for the bedroom

Romantic and intimate are what we want to achieve with the bedroom lighting. You can keep it simple with a similar setup to your dining room lighting, or you can be bold and add colours into the mix with smart lighting. If you go down the smart lighting route, use warm colour mixes such as reds, oranges and purples at a low level of brightness; or why not make the bedroom your partner’s favourite colour, or the colour of the flowers on your wedding day! Whatever you decide to do this Valentine’s Day, we hope that that this brief look at mood lighting has given you some ideas to help make it a special evening.