In most homes, lighting is an afterthought funded by whatever the sofa did not spend. This is backwards. Light decides how every color reads, how every texture casts shadow, and how every evening feels. A modest room lit beautifully will always outshine a beautiful room lit modestly.
Three layers, no exceptions
Every room needs ambient light (the general wash), task light (where you read, cook, work), and accent light (what gives the room depth after dark). The common failure is stopping at layer one — a ceiling fixture doing all three jobs badly.
A useful rule for living rooms: three light sources at three heights. A floor lamp, a table lamp, and something low — a small accent light on a bookshelf or console — create the layered glow that expensive hotels engineer and most homes skip.
A modest room lit beautifully will always outshine a beautiful room lit modestly.
Temperature and control
Buy bulbs between 2200K and 2700K for living spaces; anything cooler reads as an office. Then put everything on dimmers. The ability to tune a room from bright-morning to low-evening is the highest-return upgrade in all of interior design — cheaper than a good armchair and more transformative than paint.