Spent an afternoon at John Lewis looking at pendant lighting for the basement bedroom. Nice stuff but alot of it hangs down 55 cms or more. My ceiling's very low - 230 cm! The room is 5m x 4m and the light is right in the middle of the room, just at the end of the bed.
Does anyone know of any guidelines or tips on how to choose a pendant in this sort of situation? Or is the sort of thing like this
formatting link
the wrong way to go anyway in a low ceiling situation?
Lights pointing upwards? Downwards? My favourite has a minimum drop of
40 cms but this seems far too low but I don't know anything about this stuff. Is it too low? I'm totally design blind! I'm just trying to make the place look sensible.
> totally the wrong way to go anyway in a low ceiling situation?
Did you get your door sorted out?
I've never heard almost 8' described as low before. 6', yes.
Leola will cause glare and uneven illumination. Most centre fittings in a 4x5m room would give uneven ilumination. In a room that size I'd go for a handful of smaller fittings around he periphery. If you arent interested in wiring for those, either use plugins or else accept that youre not going to get decent even illumination and fit whatever looks nice in the middle. Lights pointing up and outwards are going to give you the best light spread, down pointers will give worse lightspread and lower energy efficiency.
Stay well away from mains halogens.
Also leola has an excessive number of lamps. To nmake that sensible you'd have to fit lots of very low power lamps, giving frequent dead bulbs, poor efficiency and elevated bills.
If youre daring you could fit something like metal guttering suspended below the ceiling, running down the room, and put cfls in it at regular intervals. Would give much better illumination than any central fitting, but trying to make the fitting look good would be a fair challenge. Perhaps cover it in velvet. I dunno!
Another push the boat out option is simply a central light with very long arms. You could use chromed plumbing pipe giving 4 arms, perhaps each 4 ft long, each running level 1' below the ceiling, with an uplight on the end of each arm, globes or if youre more daring, maybe cubes.
Fancy plumbing your own for something much better than you could buy?
I hate the dangly pendant lamps and am frustrated when viewing those on display in shops, such as BHS, where they're hung off 'ceilings' about ten-twelve foot off the floor. The answer is to ask, in a decent light-supplier shop, for a 'flush' fitting. These are available in many designs and prices but have as a common feature(s); - the fitting fits to the ceiling; the lamps(s) are inserted horizontally (if you see what I mean); and the lamps are 'hidden' by translucent covers - clipped onto the fitting. The fittings tend to look like an inverted shallow bowl which doesn't protrude downwards (by much) :( . They have the 'property' of seeming to 'disappear when they're not illuminated - whilst generating a room filling light when 'ON'. We, prefer mood lighting from table and wall-lights and task lighting for 'tasks', only using central lights when absolutely necessary. However I have a 'to-do list' which will change over all pendants to 'flush-fittings' as/when rooms are redecorated.
My loft bedroom has a finished height of 2.25m. Rather than using pendants, we have lighted the room using table lights. Table lights are ideal for bedrooms, as they provide less glare when trying to read in bed. They are run off 5A round pin sockets distributed around the room to discourage inappropriate appliances being used in the sockets.
In fact, the lighting is split into 3 circuits, for general lighting and 2 bedside lights and all can all be switched at the door, or by the bed.
Halogens have issues and arent really recommended, but if you do use them, mains ones just add further issues:
lower efficiency than 12v halogen shorter lifetime fragile in use cost more
mains halogen only offers downsides. The reduced purchase cost fo the fitting is trivial compared to extra run costs. Theyre a sales sociopaths delight.
But aren't they more efficient than normal incandescent bulbs? I don't have ANY halogen indoor lights at the moment, but the only light fittings that I find attractive seem to use halogen (I need two wall lights very soon).
They are able to produce more photons per watt. However, they also tend to have very directional lighting patterns, which makes them very suitable for car headlights, but hopeless for space lighting, meaning that they perform badly against incandescent lighting.
A typical room lighted by different methods to the same perceived level of ambient lighting might require 20W of CFL, 100W of incandescent and 200W of halogen spot lighting.
Comparing against incandescent lighting is neither here nor there, either. I would favour a ten pound tax per incandescent or halogen light bulb, so those who are obsessed with destroying the planet can be made to pay for it.
Door is on hold. It's all spec'd out though and ready to order!
Sorry, I forgot to add that it's low at 230cm compared to the other floor which is 320cm. It just feels a lot lower down in the basement.
In another thread I mentioned about my dodgy refurbishers. They spent two weeks languishing doing a bedroom and I had to get rid of them. They were supposed to be replacing underneath a staircase next and after they turned up late every day, kept nipping off to do other jobs, drinking and smoking gear on the job I couldn't face letting them continue, what with hairs on the woodwork, carpet not taken up properly, underneath a radiator painted two different colours, wall paint on skirting and ceiling etc etc. All a bit sad really. I did one bedroom myself last year and the finishing was better and that was my first time. Waste of money. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the bedroom is sort of painted so I don't think I'm going to channelling any holes in the wall in the near term!
Thanks for the advice about the main light.
Actually, I have some 'boxing in' on one side of the room where the gas and water pipes travel so maybe I could put some lights on that. The fusebox is in the room too so it must be possible :-)
This last idea sounds really good fun and I have a friend who could help me knock it up I reckon. I'm not sure how you'd support four, four foot arms though! I've seen those cubes and so on; I quite fancied this on the walls at one point
formatting link
went for one like this instead:
formatting link
how do you get hold of the parts for making your own light fixtures? Any suppliers you know of cubes or opaque glass end or the multitude of other bits needed?! Or am I going to have to go into lighting jobs unscrewing various bits from their displays :-)
Yes, it's ridiculous - you can't get a feel for how it would look at all. I felt the same at my last wander around the shops.
Is it normal/OK to put these in bedrooms though? I've only ever seen them in a bathroom but then I'm not sure of the range and haven't been in too many bedrooms. It's a good idea - I'll have to have a look around for something bedroomy.
For instance, is this OK in a bedroom?
formatting link
We, prefer
Sounds quite a good idea. I have a to-do list which is cover every bare lightbulb (currently six) or do something with them!
Some houses have doors are under 5'6". And I've seen, tho only in pictures, doors so narrow you have to enter sideways!
I'll bet they blamed you for sacking them as well.
yeah. its damn messy too, masses of dust everywhwere.
Depending on which way your ceiling joists run, it may be reasonably straightforward to put a cable on top of the ceilng plaster, and drop it down to high wall lights, 2 or 3 per side.
Theres also a less likely maybe, and thats to use enamelled copper wire run on the surface (its almost invisible) to feed 12v lights.
may be ideal, if you can get a supply wire to the boxing.
maybe use a cast metal conduit box with threaded pipe, would be strong enough. You've not got much weight on the ends, hopefully. A slightly less elegant option might be to use a simple cube of wood to accept all the pipe ends at the centre, and maybe 2/3 the way along the radial pipes put in a tee so you get a pie going upto the ceiling for support, and visual 'complicaton'.
formatting link
> but went for one like this instead:
you just gave us the links to them - get the fittings and use the bits. Those chrome plumbing fittings you got look ideal for plumbing in, just cut em off at the horizontal pipe and join to your new monster. Not sure what dia those pipes are, the look narrow. In which case cut all the chrome pipe off those and attach the bigger half inch pipe to the light bits.
The glass shades are not ideal, but would work. If you use silvered bulbs to get the majority of the light upwards that would probably work quite well. Or make some metal reflectors.and put those in the fitting to get more light up than down.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.