From munching down breakfast in the morning and helping the kids with their homework after school to relaxing with your friends in the evening, the kitchen is where we carry out a variety of our everyday activities.

Therefore, whatever your lifestyle, it is important that your kitchen can adapt to the changing uses of the room as well as reflecting your individual sense of style.

And, according to Interior designer Jo Hamilton the best way to adapt the atmosphere of your interior over the course of the day is with some clever lighting design.

So, when you're redesigning your kitchen, after you've picked out that trendy stainless steel fridge, fitted your farmhouse still sink and installed those stylish kitchen mixer taps, it's definitely worth paying some attention to your lighting.

While using a range of individual lamps statically placed round the room to complement overhead lighting will give you some control over the degree of illumination, a dimmer switch is an easier way to subtly set the atmosphere.

"By putting everything on a dimmer switch it gives you complete control over how much impact you have with light, and how much you want to turn it down," says Jo. "So during the day you can have a really strong light and then [turn it down] in the evening, maybe."

Since practicality is often a key consideration when designing a kitchen, dimmers are often a favourite of interior designers, as they allow you to turn up to full illumination when cooking or doing household chores, but you can also create soft lighting for socialising and entertaining.

"It helps you to create layers of light. I always talk about layers of light and how we need to have different types of light even just in one room," Jo adds.

"You might be running around after children in the morning, then you might have friends for lunch, then you might have a glass of wine and bit of romance, or friends over for dinner - so you need the light to be really versatile."