Lighting makes a massive difference to a room. You can take a basement flat with no windows and make it feel light, bright and welcoming just by using clever lighting. Yet it is also one of the most difficult things to do well.

Ideally, you should make a lighting plan early on in a development, but until the room is finished with every chair in place and every picture on the walls, you don't know exactly where you want it! It takes a huge amount of imagination to get it right and the sooner you start visualising what you want, the more likely you are to succeed.

Well designed lighting highlights people, areas or furniture you want to focus on, and can completely change how you use a space. Lighting can create changes in mood, shadow and texture and even affect the way you feel about a room. You hardly notice great lighting, whereas poor lighting really stands out - too bright or too dark, glaring or ineffective. Lights are something many people have problems with. One of the key things to attempt is to avoid seeing the bulb, which ensures you get the effect without seeing the light source. That's tricky to achieve, but worth attempting because a well-lit home is a subtle and non-expensive way to add value and increase saleability. People won't necessarily know why they like your property, but like it they will.

Electric lighting is so common in our lives that we forget it hasn't been around for that long. Although the rich and fashionable could buy recently invented electric filament lights from the late 1870s, it wasn't until the national grid emerged in 1926 and its rollout during the 1930s that electricity became cheaper and more readily available. A pendant overhead and a side lamp on the table gave more useful hours in the day and changed the way ordinary people lived. Today lighting has become far more sophisticated, and can create exciting visual effects in properties.

Design Trickery
Clever lighting tricks enlarge space. The main rule is the more you can make it look like natural daylight, the better it will be. Failing that, make the light a feature in itself. Window light boxes give an illusion of natural light beaming in from outside. Build a window using sandblasted glass into a fake wall at the end of a corridor, basement or living room area. Inside the cavity, add a light box plugged into a switched lighting circuit, bright light will shine through into the room. It's brilliant for creating an illusion of space beyond.

Glass-covered recessed uplighters provide soft illumination set in wooden or stone floors. They work very well in corridors or around the edges of large rooms - but be careful the room doesn't end up looking like a museum! You can also put small portholes straight into the side of a wooden staircase, with a light box behind, hidden under the stairs.

A light above a drop or suspended ceiling will bring a diffuse, sophisticated light to a living room. The drop ceiling is smaller than the true ceiling, so light shines around the edges of it into the room. It looks stunningly dramatic, especially when the drop ceiling is a dark and luxurious colour.

A light box on a wall can look like a piece of art - hang one centre stage as a feature. They provide light but also draw attention, especially if you have interchangeable colour displays. Place it on a separate dimming control system so you can alter brightness to suit the occasion. Illuminating your furniture can look fabulous - you can get interactive stools or seats which light up in glowing, luminous colours when you sit on them, and switch off when you stand up. To create changing moods and set lighting scenes, use a preset dimming control, programmed with a handheld remote control.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: SARAH BEENY
Sarah set up her own property development and investment companies at the age of 24 along with her brother and her husband.  With her business a success, Sarah was approached to be the presenter of Channel 4’s prime time show ‘Property Ladder’.   

Enjoying the opportunity to bring property to the nation, Sarah has presented many other shows such as ‘Pay Off Your Mortgage’, ‘Streets Ahead’ and ‘Britain’s Best Home’, as well as being a regular contributor to magazines including at home and has written several best selling books.

In 2005 Sarah created the online website, My Single Friend, which has been a phenomenal success and changed the attitude to online dating in this country.  

Sarah has now launched Tepilo, a market leading private property sales website which aims to bring a change to the way we buy, sell and let houses. The company was recently voted one of the top 100 small businesses in the UK and shortlisted for website of the year.

Sarah is currently on your screens with a new series – Help! My House Is Falling Down – Tuesdays at 8pm on Channel 4 or catch up with her on Twitter.