Lighting Tips for Converting a Playroom into a Home Office

If you have kids that have outgrown their playroom days, chances are you’re facing this common design dilemma. What should you do with a home playroom area that’s hardly-used to make it a functional, family-oriented living space again? 

For practical purposes, many homeowners are converting their abandoned playrooms into home office spaces. And the reason is simple. As young kids become teenagers, they outgrow playtime activities because their homework responsibilities have grown exponentially. And as more parents continue to regularly work from home, it makes sense to have a fully-functioning home office space. 

When busy teenagers come home after school, they’ll most likely use an office space more than an outdated juvenile playroom. During the day when teens are at school, parents can use the home office as their personal work space for business, paying bills, making appointments, and doing other daily work tasks. 

Converting a playroom into a productive office space requires a bit of planning and remodeling. Updating paint colors, reconfiguring furniture, adding a desk or two, and changing out the room’s lighting are critical factors for home office conversions. 

If you’re wondering how important proper lighting is for a typical home office, you’re not alone. This is a common question and concern for many homeowners looking to create the perfect home office. 

What is the best lighting for a home office? What types of home office lighting are recommended for video calls? And what’s the best lighting for home offices with no windows? We’re going to answer these questions and more as we discuss why lighting may be the most important aspect to consider when designing your ultimate at-home office.      

Lighting That Increases Productivity

Lighting in a home office serves a variety of functions. It must be bright enough so you can see properly, the fixtures should be aesthetically pleasing so you enjoy being in there, and the bulbs should be the correct color temperature to maintain productivity.

Staying alert, focused, and productive are important reasons behind what’s the best lighting for a home office. What makes good lighting for a playroom isn’t necessarily the same for good lighting in an office. While playroom lighting tends to range a bit warmer, office lighting should be cooler, and range more towards crisp, bluish-white color temperatures.

Studies have shown that this type of lighting has a stimulating effect on human alertness and productivity. Correlated color temperatures ranging from 4500-6500K emit cool, crisp, bright light that’s ideal for performing office-related tasks such as reading spreadsheets, studying facts, analyzing data, writing reports and more.     

Lighting Placement in a Home Office

Lighting quality and placement is vital for any room, but it’s especially important in a home office space. If light sources aren’t properly placed within the room, bad office lighting can cause eye strain, visual discomfort, headaches, and leave you feeling drained of energy in the middle of a big project.

Plus, if your typical workday involves multiple video conference calls, you want to make sure that lighting is strategically directed to make you appear more flattering on camera.

What is the best lighting set-up for a home office? Most lighting designers will agree a mix of direct and indirect light sources works better than just one overhead light or a single desk lamp. An overhead light, such as a hanging pendant or flush-mount fixture provides indirect ambient light, while desk and floor lamps offer direct light that’s essential for seeing properly while doing specific tasks. Installing overhead track lighting is another way to increase direct light within the room.   

For video conference calls, simply follow these basic rules for best lighting placement. Avoid overly bright background lighting, because this could make your face appear too dark. Instead put the brightest light source in front of  you, or at a 45-degree angle. Also be cautious about too much overhead lighting. Rely on adjustable desk lamps, floor lamps, and natural light for better results on camera.    

How Much Natural Light is Available?

Is your kids’ playroom in a back room or basement area with limited or no natural light source? If it is, your new home office is going to need more than just ample lighting. To stay better focused, your converted home office needs light that mimics the effects of natural daylight.

With no windows to fill the room with sunlight, artificial lighting will be the sole source of illumination. Installing bulbs with dimming capabilities and using a variety of color temperatures will ensure just the right type of light for every fixture’s unique purpose. And changing color temperature from neutral white, to cool, bluish-white, then to warmer white, helps regulate Circadian rhythm, our body’s internal alarm clock.     

Ease of Installation

Does your home’s old playroom already have an overhead light? If it does, you may just have to switch out the bulbs instead of installing an entirely new fixture. For additional task lighting, installation is super easy. Simply bring in a few adjustable desk lamps and floor lamps, then plug them in – talk about easy and stress-free! 

Rated Life Span

Your new state-of-the-art home office deserves the latest lighting technology. If you’re wondering what types of bulbs to get, we’ll make it easy for you. Choose LED lighting. Don’t even think about fluorescent or incandescent bulbs. 

Home office lighting should be reliable, long-lasting, and energy efficient. LEDs beat the competition in all three areas. LED lights have exceptionally long life spans, so you’ll go years before having to change a bulb. Plus, they use much less energy than other light sources, so you’ll save significantly on energy bills.  

Shop TCP Lighting

The lighting experts at TCP can help you find the right lighting solutions for your playroom-to-office home makeover. Retrofitting fixtures, replacing lights, and selecting LED bulbs with the appropriate color temperatures and dimming options is easy with TCP on your side. Are you ready to get started? Shop our residential LED lights.