Choosing the Best Modern Bathroom Lighting

“When it comes to bath and vanity lighting, think about style and quality through the lens of minimalism,” says SONNEMAN founder and designer, Robert Sonneman. “You’ll want different sources of light that are flexible and dimmable, depending on the time of day and task at hand.” 

How to Choose the Best Bathroom Lighting

Achieving a well-designed bathroom lighting scheme is a balancing act. Too little light, and you won’t be able to see what you’re doing. Too much light, and you'll create unwanted glare. We’ve created a guide to help you choose the best bathroom lighting.

There are many places to consider illuminating when choosing the best bathroom lighting to enhance your space. As lighting experts, we’re often asked how to illuminate this important space. Follow our modern principles for designing the best bathroom lighting to make the process a bit easier.

Set Your Lighting Strategy

When first setting out to choose the best lights for your bathroom, we recommend using multiple sources of light. Start by leveraging what natural light that flows inside, ensuring your bathroom windows have treatments that allows it diffuse throughout your space. This creates a soft glow and serves as a foundational layer of light. 

Next, we recommend using a mix of overhead ambient and vanity task lighting in your bathroom. Even if you have a window in your space, the overarching goal is to emulate natural daylight as much as possible. Integrating both ambient and task lighting will also help eliminate visual glare and harsh shadows throughout your space.

Consider Color Temperatures

In order to emulate the feeling of natural light, the best bathroom lighting designs choose the color temperature of fixtures with intentionality and always incorporate dimmability. We recommend warmer color temperatures for bathroom lighting—between 2700K and 3000K—which tend to be more flattering than cooler ones. Note to avoid color temperatures above 3500K in particular for your bathroom lighting. This color temperature distributes more white-and-blue-toned light that is not ideal for bathrooms.

Layer Your Bathroom Lighting

When choosing fixtures for a bathroom, recessed downlights bring the best of minimalist functionality to this space. We recommend placing a single Intervals Recessed Downlights fixture centered and above your bathroom vanity, where you’d typically stand. This creates a streamlined, clean look and feel for a diffused layer of light. 

Illuminate Your Vanity

Next, pair your overhead recessed light with a wall-mounted vanity bath bar fixture. This creates a source of light between your face in the mirror, ensuring your reflection isn’t shadowed and adding character to your overall bathroom design. One option is to mount your fixture above your vanity mirror; we recommend installing single mounted fixtures 78 inches from the ground. Alternatively, another popular option is to install wall-mounted fixtures flanking both sides of your vanity mirror, typically 68 inches from the ground and 28 inches apart from one another. 

We recommend the Stix and Radio LED Bath Bars for either application. However, if you’re interested in a fixture installation that wraps around your entire mirror, opt for the Purolinear 360 LED Wall Bar.

Make it Dimmable

Finally, when choosing the best lighting for bathrooms, we recommend dimmable lights that allow you to adapt its intensity depending on the time of day. Dimmable lighting offers unparalleled control over light and many different effects, whether that’s soothing, dramatic or vibrant. All SONNEMAN bathroom lighting fixtures are made with LED bulbs, making them ideal for the demands of energy efficiency and dimmability. 

The bathroom is a crucial part of the home, made to provide an energized start to our days and relaxing nighttime routine. And lighting is key to getting this highly functional room just-right. Browse all SONNEMAN bath and vanity lighting to reinvigorate your bathroom design today.