Kitchen lighting

[Brad]

I'm putting a farmhouse style kitchen/diner in my cottage. The ceilings are low but no beams. I wonder if any of you can make any suggestions for lighting please. The room is 22 sq m. Thank you

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

I'd avoid using recessed downlighters (mains halogen or low-voltage) as a main source of light. They give nice bright patches on the floor, but can leave the rest of the room feeling distinctly gloomy, unless used in profusion, in which case expensive to run. Also don't look very cottagey!

Some sort of wall lights perhaps, augmented with table lamps. Under-cupboard lighting looks too modern for my eye, but is undeniably good as task lighting. Maybe if you used pygmy bulbs rather than fluorescent tubes the colour would be less harsh.

 

[Brad]

Thanks for that. I see your point about under-cupboard lights but have already ordered those with the kitchen units. Unfortunately with kitchens the problem for me is trying to retain the cottagey look with lighting that's not too harsh, but at the same time getting it right for cooking etc. I had been thinking about wall lights and certainly table lamps are fine at the dining end of the room. Also it can be quite a dark room during the daytime on dull days - and there are plenty of those right now! At the moment, there is a horrible strip of spotlights at the kitchen end, which are not efficient and I think expensive to run and a central ceiling light, which we don't use at the dining end as we prefer to use a couple of table lamps. Maybe we should just wait until the kitchen units are in and then see how we get on with the under-cupboard lighting. Thanks a lot.

 

[NT]

You didnt tell us how high the ceilings were - 'low' is vague really.

Wall lights are somewhat cottagey, and will do when nothing else is possible. It is sometimes possible to get away with kitchen cabinet lighting with little or nothing else.

There are a few relevant articles here:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Special:Allpages

I wouldnt really recommend pygmy bulbs under cabinets, decent quality fl tubes will give better results in several respects.


NT

 

[Brad]

The ceiling is 2.2m high. We've already ordered our cabinet lighting - 2 packs of 3 halogen lights (as suggested by the designer) and are now wondering whether we should change to fluorescent for a more even light. What would you think? the units, range cooker etc (with chimney above also with light) will be ranged along two walls 3.6 x 2.8. Thanks for the link - very useful. Any more suggestions or comments would be gratefully received.

Thanks

 

[Lime]

Not to everybody's taste but I fitted Cat 2 Surface Mount Luminaires in my new kitchen.
I bought them from Toolstation.
They provide a large amount of light into the room but do not dazzle or glare.

Every one who has come to have a look have said they liked the lights.

They don't travel very well so it is better to collect them if you can rather than have them delivered.

 

[Brad]

Thanks for that. It's hard to tell without seeing the real thing but would that kind of light look OK in a cottage?

 

[Penners]

I take Andrew's point about recessed downlighters, but at 2.2m height and with a good wide spread of lamp, I don't think the pooled light would be too exaggerated, unless you positioned them very far apart.

Besides, some light and shade in your lighting can look very effective, provided the bright areas are strategically placed.

If you found that you wanted to add some background light, you could try placing a floodlight on top of a wall unit (hidden behind the cornice if there is one), aimed upwards to bounce light off the ceiling.

The question of what is appropriate in a period cottage is, of course, very subjective. It's a matter of your own taste.

 

[Brad]

Well thank you all - lots of food for thought. One of the reasons I don't really want recessed downlights is that I would have to take up the floorboards in the rooms above the kitchen and one of them is a bathroom with ceramic tiles. I suppose there's no easy way of doing it from below. Any thoughts on that.

 

[Lime]

Well thank you all - lots of food for thought. One of the reasons I don't really want recessed downlights is that I would have to take up the floorboards in the rooms above the kitchen and one of them is a bathroom with ceramic tiles. I suppose there's no easy way of doing it from below. Any thoughts on that.

It depends on the type of ceiling you have as to whether or not downlights are a good idea.
Fitting dowlights in old lath and plaster can be a destructive experience.
I don't think you can easily fit them without access to the floor/ceiling void although I expect some might be easier to fit than others.
Heat from the lights can be a problem both in the void and directly under them and, as someone has already said, they are not cheap to run.

With regard to the Cat 2 Surface Mount Luminaires I mentioned earlier they are really fancy fluorescent lights designed for office work where glare from computer screens is a problem.
In the kitchen they form a flood of light but the actual lamps are unseen.
My wife thought I needed my head examined when I ordered them.
However she and even the electrician who put them up was impressed with their looks and light.
they are modern but what electric light isn't?

 

[biffvernon]

they are modern but what electric light isn't?

Incandescent bulbs aren't modern - they are a 19th century invention and have no place in the 21st century as they waste far too much energy.

 

[Lime]

they are modern but what electric light isn't?

Incandescent bulbs aren't modern - they are a 19th century invention and have no place in the 21st century as they waste far too much energy.

The energy isn't wasted, it is given off as heat.
In most peoples' houses that heat adds to heating the house.
Without that heat the central heating or fire has to make the deficit up.

 

[biffvernon]

You only need heating half the year. Maybe you go to bed early in summer?
Vital Trivia

 

[Lime]

You only need heating half the year. Maybe you go to bed early in summer?
Vital Trivia

You won't find any incandescents in my house except for the glass chandelier.
However I think the low energy bulbs are nowhere as green as they make out.

 

[Moo]

The Cat 2 luminaires are quite hard to find on the Toolstation site (I've just spent quite a while hunting for them).
So, in case anyone else is interested, here's the page where I found them (half-way down) :

http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Electrical/CommercialLighting/d190/sd2768

 

[Penners]

I hope Brad won't mind if I add a related question to this thread, while the lighting experts are on hand.

If you have an ordinary incandescent lamp switched with a dimmer switch, and you turn the dimmer down so that the lamp is giving off about half of its maximum light output, is it using half the electricity?

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes . . . probably (!)

Modern dimmers for AC circuits reduce the amount of power going to the lamp by 'chopping out' a variable amount of the AC waveform. The more you 'chop out' the less power is delivered to the lamp, so the lamp will be dimmer and your meter will run more slowly.

I'm not sure how linear an incandescent lamp is though, i.e. if the dimmer delivers exactly half the power then I'm not sure if the total light emitted will be 50%, but I'd guess it would be roughly half. But, whatever the actual effect on the lamp brightness, if you only deliver half the power then it will only cost half as much.

 

[MdB]

Unfortunately, I don't think you are necessarily right about the meter charging.

If you have a dimmer set that it switches to allow only half of the waveform to reach the light then the power reaching the light will be half and the light will be half brightness(*).

However, industrial power meters (as used in large factories) measure two things, effective power (measured in Watts) and reactive power (measured in VArs). VArs are imaginary power (doesn't do any work) but cause problems at the power station so you get charged for them. Now the reason for all of this is complex and this really isn't the place to go into it all. However, a dimmer will cause the VAr load to go up and it is possible that a domestic meter will measure this and hence the price you pay for it will be more than the actual effective usage.

Now I don't know the full details of how a domestic electricity meter actually works so I don't know if it measures VArs or not. If it does then dimmer on half setting will record more than half on the meter, if it does not then the meter will read exactly half.

(*) A bulb with half the power going through it will produce half the energy output when compared to full power. However, it will appear slightly less than half full brightness to the human eye as the wavelengths it generates will be shifted towards the red end of the spectrum which means a greater proportion will be generated in the IR which we can't see. I doubt anybody would actually be able to tell this by looking at it though as this effect will be small.

 

[Flyfisher]

I understand your point, but an incandescent lamp is not a reactive load so I don't think the 'power factor' is relevant. With a purely resistive load (i.e. the lamp filament), voltage and current are in phase and all the power is dissipated in the resistive load (which is recorded by the meter).

I believe industrial power meters take account of the power factor of inductive loads because such places are often full of big electric motors etc, and the power companies are obviously concerned to accurately meter (and charge!) for this, but this is not normal in domestic situations so a cheaper meter is more appropriate. They also have to meter 3-phase installations, whereas most domestic installations are single-phase.

But it's an interesting point and just goes to show how even apparently simple things can be very complex underneath.

 

[bournonite]

Those dimmer switches also get very hot when loaded - at least some of the lost light is put out in the form of heat in the switch coil.....

Cheers!