“From basic solutions of simply illuminating the place, lighting today has graduated to a mood-decider or an ambience creator, even an expression of class", says Jack Robinson of GE Lighting. Millionaires have spent hordes of money decorating their mansions. Bill Gates is reputed to have spent $10 million on purely lighting fixtures for his $100 million mansion. Richard Branson spends average $6 to $8 million in each of his numerous manors. Even if your budget doesn’t quite fall in the same league, there’s a huge variety out there when it comes to acquiring the right lighting solution for your dear home.

The huge variety of choices available today is due to the increasing trend of people moving ahead and choosing the ambience of their own homes, rather than leave all the hard work to an outsider. Not only does it gives a great deal of satisfaction, the money saved can also be well utilized in actually buying some of those expensive fittings you have been craving.

A new house is the easiest to plan out, as planning for it is like painting on a blank canvass- the world is your oyster. Over-the-top lighting solutions can overshadow expensive furniture while the reverse holds equally true - tastefully done good lighting can well make even ordinary furniture look very classy. Again – money saved is money earned – so you would save a fair amount besides the glances of admiration and oodles of praise that your styles will draw.

Let us start with that most important of places – the dining room.

“You need good lighting in this portion of the house to first satisfy its basic function – see the food laid out on the dining room tables," says Robert White, a New York based interior designer. Use halogen lights to highlight the tabletop, and improve the ambience of those dishes that have taken so much of time and effort in the kitchen. Try a pair of hanging lights rather than a single one so as to evenly distribute the light over the whole table.

For the overall lighting of the room and to bring out the best in the dining room furniture, use soft, non-glare wall lights in white or a color to compliment your walls and overall decor. A dining room hutch can be lit with small, concealed lights which, besides highlighting your expensive display items, would also add to the depth of the room.

Use soft lighting to reduce the look of a large sized room, especially if you have a high ceiling you want to camouflage. Bright lighting would similarly work opposite – make a smaller room look larger than it actually is.

Use lighting effectively to separate out the two portions in houses that have a common dining cum living room. Use different color lights in the dining and living areas to distinguish them. A dimmer works well to add an inexpensive option of varied lighting themes with the same lighting to suit your mood. They may not work with CFLs and florescent lighting, but adding a bulb here and there with a dimmer may not add prohibitively to your electricity bill, while it would definitely do wonders to the ambience. If you are a die-hard fluorescent fan, use mood lighting instead.

Do sign in next week to learn more about options to decorate other parts of the house in part two of this article.