Adding light

Hang a Well-Placed Mirror In my living room I hung a large mirror to reflect light and the beautiful view of our woods. In the dining room I hung a wall of antique ones in various sizes to catch any light I could in that room.

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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Paint Your Rooms Deep Colors The inclination with dark rooms is to paint them light to try and brighten things up, but sometimes the best thing to do is to embrace the shadows and go for deeper, moody colors that make a dark room feel cozy. Warm green is a perfect color for this space. The black doors and brass hardware add to the feeling of richness and warmth. The double French doors open to the light and bright kitchen.

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Here the open floor plan and plentitude of windows create a pleasing feel in a rather dark space.

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Widen Doorways and Take Down Unnecessary Walls if You Can This is the London townhouse we saw above. The windowless kitchen doesn't feel dark because of the wonderful skylight, as well as the complete openness to the dining room and beyond that, the living room with large windows. Imagine it with only a narrow doorway between — a different story entirely.

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This room is dark, but the French doors with sidelights and transoms create a wall of windows that opens this darker room for a view of the light-filled kitchen.

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Replace Interior Solid Doors With Glass or French Doors Interior doors help provide soundproofing, something very important in the prevalent open plans today. However, French doors provide a way for rooms to share light and to avoid shutting rooms off.

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Add Glass Doors Our original front door had sidelights with amber glass in that bottle-bottom pattern so popular in the '70s. Our house faced north, so our entry was dim and dark. It led into our windowless dining room, which flowed into the kitchen. Standing at the island in our brand-new kitchen, that dark entry was my view. Ugh. We installed a solid wood 15-pane glass door with matching five-pane sidelights.

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With skylights there can be a greater risk of leakage simply because of the larger hole cut in your roof. Another consideration is the heat they can generate.

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Install Tubular Daylighting Devices (TDDs) or Skylights The very first thing we did was have tubular daylighting devices installed. These are sort of like mini skylights. To quote Lindsey M. Roberts from her ideabook specifically on the subject, TDDs "are reflective cylinders or pipes installed between the roof and ceiling, with a clear plastic dome. The bottoms of the tubes are diffused or glazed to prevent glaring beams of light and to ensure a soft glow." We had three installed: one in the living room, another in the kitchen and a third in our entry. They worked beautifully, and to say the difference was like night and day for those rooms isn't just a figure of speech. We used Solatubes and were very pleased with the quality and performance.

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