If you're looking for ways to transform your home into that special place for living, take a look at your lighting. The fact is that proper illumination plays a major role in the look and feel of your home. In particular, the judicious use of floor lamps and light shades can makeover the mood and functionality of your home quickly and inexpensively. Floor lamps are the perfect accessories to ramp up your home lighting as they're so easy to set up. And lamp shades can add style and atmosphere to your rooms in a trice.

Effective illumination is key to a quality environment. Other than making our homes functionally livable, lighting also enhances beauty, creates desired moods and complements lifestyles. In order to get it right in our home we need to understand the three main types of lighting.

The first is ambient lighting, the overall illumination for a room. This type essentially replaces daylight and provides the general lighting you need to live comfortably in your home. This generally comes from ceiling lights but can also come from wall and floor lamps.

Floor lamps can function as ambient lights by shining their beams onto the ceiling. The result is a gentle, reflected glow around the whole room. Floor lamps can also work to provide focal points to a room.

The next type is known as accent lighting. This works to highlight special areas and objects in your home to show off their qualitative and create a certain mood or atmosphere. Track lights, spotlights and wall lights generally provide accent lighting. You can also get accent illumination from floor lamps judiciously positioned to shine onto the desired areas.

The final type of light is known as task lighting. As the name suggests, this type of illumination allows you to easily carry out daily activities such as reading, cooking or sewing. Task lighting can come from many sources including spotlights, table lights, floor lamps and wall lights. Floor lamps are perfect for use as task lights. You can position a floor lamp behind your sofa or easy chair to work as a reading lamp, for example.

When it comes to developing an effective lighting plan for your home, another fast and easy way is through the judicious use of light shades. This is a powerful way to quickly change the illumination in a room.

Lamp shades come in a range of styles and sizes and you'll have to experiment to get the ones right for your rooms. Time was when your choices of lamp shade were white or cream. Nowadays, you can find them in a vast range of colours or embellished in a range of motifs such as tapestries, abstract designs or exotic plants and animals. And the choice of materials is wide, too.

When it comes to light shades, you have a wide range of fabrics to choose from, everything from cotton and linen to damask, mica and silk. Each fabric adds its own special quality to the light and thus each creates its own mood. You can also get shades crafted from paper and glass, with Murano glass from Venice being extremely popular. Also timelessly appealing are Tiffany shades based on classic stained glass designs.

You need to be sure your shades are transparent enough to allow the required amount of light through otherwise your rooms might be too gloomy. It depends on the functionality, however. When it comes to accent lighting, dark lamp shades are popular.

Making over your home with lighting is quick and inexpensive and the results can be astonishing. The deft and tasteful use of floor lamps and light shades can transform the whole look of your rooms and create magical spaces to live and work in comfort and style.

The great thing about revamping your home through the use of floor lamps and light shades is it can be done without touching the structure of the building. Just buy them, position them in the required spot, plug them in and then all you need is a little tweaking.

To get ideas about the range of lights available, you can browse the web sites of the UK's leading lighting vendors and get an idea of what kinds of lamps and shades are available. You can then place your order safely online for swift delivery.