When Lighting A Room With High Ceilings, Avoid Falling Into Some Of These Common Mistakes

High ceilings add beauty and grandeur to a room but only if they're lit up well enough for you to see them. Unfortunately, high ceilings tend to suck up the light in the room like a black hole in the far reaches of the universe. This makes lighting your home space challenging to say the very least. As such, it's important to keep a couple of common mistakes in mind as you're choosing the lighting in rooms where 10-foot-high (or taller) ceilings are the norm. 

One of the first mistakes that DIYers make when it comes to lighting is not utilizing the rule of thirds in their space. In each of the thirds, a different type of lighting needs to be employed so that you get full coverage in the room. Unsurprisingly, the bottom third of the room should get all your floor lamps. The middle third of the room is the place to show off taller floor lamps, fancy table lamps on the credenza, side tables, or fireplace mantel, and sconce lighting on the walls. The top third of the room is reserved for hanging ceiling lights, like chandeliers with long chains.

Combining this technique with the rule of layering is responsible for creating all the areas of ambient light in the room as well as patches of accent and task lighting. If you've used all of these elements in the room, you should have minimal dark spots where at least some light will reach. Layering contributes to the flow of the room, so you need to include your high ceilings in that.

Hanging lights, like chandeliers, work wonders in rooms with high ceilings. Their lengthy cord allows them to hang down into the space, closer to the center of the middle section of the room (based on the rule of thirds). However, because high ceilings are so voluminous, they make thin, sleek lights look minuscule by comparison. To counterbalance this effect, swap out the "light-weight" chandelier and replace it with a bulkier, more modern chandelier instead. This spreads out the reach of the arms, allowing for more light to fill more of the space.

Additionally, if the room is exceptionally long, you may need to install two or three chandeliers to ensure that the whole room is lit evenly. This strategy can also be a way to visually separate an open-concept room without adding dividers. In other words, you'll put one chandelier over the dining room area, one over the great room area, and one over the kitchen. In the end, approaching the task this way ensures that you get good lighting a room as a whole, despite its high ceilings trying to eat up the light. Instead, you'll be left with a functional and beautifully-lit space that embraces the spaciousness of the room.