What is the current trend in lighting in a family room or LR

All my rooms have overhead lighting but I much prefer lamps in the LR and BR and almost exclusively use those. I prefer overhead in the bathroom and kitchen and craft room, anywhere I need to see better (obviously).

Our home has recessed cans throughout plus fan/light kits in most rooms. And then we also have lamps for task and ambient lighting at eye level.

I prefer recessed lighting on dimmer switches. I don't know if that's the trend, but it's what I prefer. I don't like lamps in main living areas of my home.

We have recessed lighting and/or fans with lights in most of the house but we only use the ones in the kitchen. We have lamps in each room and built in shelves with indirect lighting in the family room. Overhead lights are too harsh.

Our house was built in ‘82 but was extensively remodeled around 2000. What would be the formal living room has no overhead lights, just outlets for table or floor lamps. Our family room (same level but across the foyer from the formal living room) has wall sconces and also table and floor lamps. The sconces don’t provide very bright lighting for reading, etc. though. Both rooms also have huge picture windows on the east side of the house.

Historically, we have spent almost no time in the formal living room and mostly have used it for large toy storage/ play area, we spend most of our time in the family room. I wish the family room had an overhead light with a ceiling fan since we tend to have a fan running in there about 50-60% of the time in the warmer months anyway.

At our lake cabin which was totally rebuilt from the ground up in 2019-2020, we put a bunch of can lights in the ceiling positioned to illuminate various areas plus a row of pendant lights over the kitchen island and a separate fixture over the dining room table. (It’s an open concept great room space.) There are multiple switches so different groups of them can be turned on or off separately, and they also all have dimmers which is nice if we want to watch a movie or something.

To see what is current you could go to houzz.com and do a search with your preferred decorating style and it will show all kinds of options. 

Our home is roughly the same vintage as yours - when I switched to a WAH job, I found that I hated the lighting in the room that became my office. We had recessed lighting and dimmer switches installed in the office and the kitchen.

I *love* them - literally every morning I say to myself “I love these lights!”. The lights themselves are much smaller than the old “can” style lights, and much more pleasant. I’ll be adding them to other rooms in the house over the next couple of years!