Nursery lighting needs to be carefully thought out when you are decorating the baby’s room. For feeding and diapering you need task lighting, but you don’t want to wake him up so much that he can’t go back to sleep after those late night feedings!
Keeping a couple of night lights on in the room is a good idea. You can get a table lamp/night light combination for one of your lamps. The often have cute shadows that babies like to look at. And it keeps you from bumping into things and waking the baby.
Wall sconces are good for directing light to a specific spot, so they make good task lighting. If you install it on a dimmer switch, you can keep it really low and still see what you’re doing. You can put a small table lamp with a low wattage bulb on a high chest, which will diffuse the light and still keep the glare off the baby. They can often be found with matching sheets and bumpers.
A floor lamp on a dimmer is also good, but you must remember to keep the lamp behind a piece of furniture, and the plug must not be accessible to a crawling infant. And you don’t want junior to pull that lamp down on himself!
The bulbs you use in your lamps should be CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) for several reasons.
- It is a softer light, and not as hard on baby’s eyes.
- If the bulbs are accidentally touched, they are cooler than incandescent bulbs…they won’t burn the baby
- Lowering the electric bill and greening up your home is a good thing.
