Downlighters - how many in a kitchen?

[invalid]

sorry, I manage to c*ck the quoting up it was aimed at the only in a workshop bit.

[invalid]

Some of the flat panel ones are controllable using an app, you can dim and change colour temp of them. They are more expensive.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Mine is, if you like, a kitchen/breakfast room. So more like two rooms in one. And is more used than any other room in the house - so more than just kitchen things. I'd agree with you if it was only used for basic kitchen things. But isn't that rather rare these days?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Dunno what mine cost as I built it all - apart from the doors.

And what do you find odd about being able to vary the lighting in a kitchen? Of course it should have good working light when needed. Which here, isn't all the time.

[Bill Wright]

That's why downlighters need to be quite close together.

Bill

[ARW]

With the warm white I sometimes cannot tell the difference.

[RJH]

I wouldn't want floodlighting all the time in a kitchen - even a basic one like mine. After the cooking and tidying up is done, an undercupboard light is a lot nicer when making a cup of tea etc.

But each to own - my brother is pretty much the opposite, cool white spotlight and downlighters everywhere, always.

[NY]

As I was replacing tungsten GU10 with warm white LED GU10, I turned the lights on part-way through the process and I could not distinguish one from the other, either by looking at the lights in the ceiling or looking at the room that they illuminated. Putting my hand near them, the difference in heat output was *very* noticeable, though ;-)

[ARW]

It sort of buggers up the old riddle of three lights in a room with no windows each controlled by individual switches outside the room and you have to work out which lamp is controlled by which switch but once you have entered the room you can no longer touch the light switches.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They have a slight green tint compared to halogen at full belt. And not as continuous a spectrum. Which can make colours change between daylight and artificial. But are getting there.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Of course if you start out with one central light and only one circuit and want to keep things simple you're not going to have much choice. And many simply don't care that the mood of a room can be altered by decent lighting. Which is their choice.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sounds like they needed to replace their electrician. ;-)

[ARW]

Another thing that has really improved is the number of failures after a few weeks.

[gopalansampath]

For a similar size kitchen I have downlights in 0.6 m pitch in longer side and in 1.2 m rows which light up uniformly. However spots like cooktops / range have short florscent units right above at 1.8 m height from ground ( mostly anchored to exhaust grill work) to make it easy for the misses !

[nothanks]

Thanks (and to everyone else). I experimented with a few different downlighters yesterday (I haven't plasterboarded the ceiling yet) and was not impressed with them. It seemed that a 0.6m to 0.8m pitch would be needed regardless of beam angle (all were about 500 lumen) and that's a lot of lights. I'm now considering the LED panels that people have recommended and will start a new thread about them.

[T i m]

<snip>

How much cooking do the kids do though?

Cheers, T i m

[ARW]

It may be possible to swap them for GU10 LEDs without much effort.

Depending on the spot lights fittings you may be able to swap the transformer for a GU10 lamp holder and still use the same fitting.

Typical sort of lamp holder here

[ARW]

Or just use a free app on a smart phone. My phone and app pretty much matches the works light meter.

[John Rumm]

Yup I found that the wider beam angles were only to be had in fixed LED fittings. The ones I used in my bathroom were 90 degree, and colour temp switchable.

[John Rumm]

Yeah, flat on your back on a kitchen worktop used to be the result of a really good party, not a failed lamp! :-)