Nothing makes a bathroom appear smaller and drearier than insufficient lighting. A bathroom needs plenty of even, shadow-free lighting for shaving, grooming, and applying makeup.

The appearance, performance, and safety of your bathroom will improve dramatically if it's illuminated properly. In this bath, you can see how good lighting adds sparkle to fixtures, fittings, and surfacing materials. In any bath, it helps you distinguish the merry-berry lipstick from the ravishing-red, and makes you less likely to cut yourself shaving or take a misstep and fall.

Top tips for bathroom lighting
Place suitable wall fixtures on each side of a medium-size mirror, correctly positioned over the wash basin, to illuminate your face as needed for shaving or applying makeup.

To make a bathroom seem larger, decorate with lighter colours such as pale gold, butter and cream, as shown above.

For small mirrors, decorative wall brackets on each side will illuminate both sides of your face evenly.

Install recessed downlights, designed for use in wet areas, in the shower and above the tub.

Mount a wall bracket across the top of the mirror to install a 'dressing room' style lighting feature. Fixtures equipped with incandescent bulbs behind glass or plastic diffusers provide the most flattering light. If you opt for more energy-efficient fluorescents, choose warm white tones.

When lighting a grooming centre, it's best to plan light from above and both sides. Install a fixture that casts light just over the front edge of the sink. This will bounce light off the countertop and up onto your face. In addition, install fixtures on both sides of the mirror. Theatrical lighting strips that frame a mirror work wonderfully. Plan a central ceiling fixture that will give adequate light for general tasks, including dressing and cleaning, in the bathroom.

Dress the window or windows so that natural light beams in while preserving privacy. Consider a skylight for natural lighting in a bathroom that lacks a window.

More is generally better than less when it comes to bathroom illumination. Generally those side lights for the mirror should contain two 60 watt bulbs, and the ceiling fixture should hold a bulb or bulbs rated at 100 watts. Equivalent fluorescent output is about a third to a half of the wattage of incandescent bulbs.