Your shower is an often overlooked area of the bathroom when referring to lighting. In most situations people just have a regular light in the bathroom and nothing special is added to the shower area. This is not always a good idea. You want to be as comfortable as possible so why not take advantage of all the opportunities available? Remember that shower lighting is useful for both security and mood setting.
Colored shower lighting is now gaining popularity, mainly because of the numerous options that are available. It is quite hard not to find something that would work great for your bathroom. However, you may want to think about the following things to make the best possible arrangement.
Proper Light Levels
Colored shower lighting is usually not very strong but some people make the mistake of underestimating light levels. As a simple example, you might buy LED lights and then end up blinded as you take a shower. This is definitely not something that you want to have to deal with.
Take into account the total illumination present in the room. If you have under 75 watts, it is not actually enough. When you add too much, you will be bothered. Since you are adding lighting to your shower, do consider other overlooked areas like vessel sides or over the WC.
Don’t Forget About Daylight
When you have a lot of natural light inside your bathroom and you often take showers during the day as opposed to during nights, colored shower lighting may not even be needed. No matter the case, if possible, add as much natural light as possible since this will only make you feel a lot better while in the bathroom.
A common problem appears with large windows close to bathtubs and showers inside the tubs. In this case you need to think about privacy. If possible, consider using bottom-up shades. If not, you need to do all that you can and add more colored lighting.
Vanity Lighting Counts
No bathroom experience is complete without proper vanity lighting in modern design. The problem is that, once again, you can easily end up adding too much. In many bathrooms we have no options of dimming lights or lighting up lights in sectors. You want to be sure that you do not forget about light levels.
Generally speaking, many designers prefer to use mirror walls but this is not always an option. An alternative is to move some light fixtures to side walls. Ceiling pendants are also good. When such elements are present, colored shower lighting should match the overall theme and color scheme of the bathroom. It would be really bad to add some red shower lights and have only white in the rest of the bathroom. Whenever adding color to a part of the room you have to be sure that it does not lower the overall effect you try to obtain.
Building Codes
This is something that needs to be mentioned since most homeowners are not aware of the fact there are some strict codes that have to be respected with lights placed above whirlpools and tubs. You cannot have hanging or open fixtures at a close distance, as an example. If you have both a tub and a shower in the same enclosed area, you want to consider using wet-rated downlights or lensed damp lights. Spotlights can be placed outside building codes defined area. However, in this case you need to be sure that you light the desired areas with color as opposed to too much, which is what often happens.
Open Shower Trim Lights
These are the best lights for setting a great bathroom experience with colored shower lights. Cans that can punch light directly down with a dim switch work incredibly well in many cases. With the regular 60 Watt maximum light cans people use, you need at least 2 for proper lighting. Only one will not work well unless the shower is particularly small.
