I quite fancy the idea of fluorescent tubes on top of kitchen cupboards, as suggested on here over the years. Are there non-flickering types that will not be noticeable on start up? I'm also a little concerned about the coldness of the light bouncing off a white ceiling. Can anyone suggest a tube that might be closer to daylight? TIA
Yes. You are looking for a type that has a high frequency electronic ballast.
Daylight is actually quite cold. You want a much warmer tri-phosphor tube if you want to match tungsten bulbs.
Christian.
In article , stuart noble I'm also a little concerned about the coldness of the light bouncing off
Genuine daylight is about as cold as you'll get. Did you mean a better match to tungsten?
For my under cupboard lighting, I used dimmable Osram high frequency ballasts, and Philips tubes matched to tungsten. Not the cheapest option, but the results are stunning.
In article , "stuart noble" I'm also a little concerned about the coldness of the light bouncing off a
Real daylight is just about the coldest colour you can get. When will you be using the light, and how bright is your kitchen?
If the answer is only in the evenings (so you are looking only at standard evening lighting levels), and you want to mix with filament lighting and have the same colour, then you want 2700K tubes. For a brightly lit kitchen and where you might use the lights to supplement daylight, then 3000K or 3500K would be more appropriate. For a very brightly light kitchen, you could go up to 4000K. I wouldn't recommend anything higher than than though. The real daylight tubes are up in the 6000K area, but unless you get the lighting level up to that of the midday sun, which would probably mean covering the ceiling in fluorescent lamps, it will look very cold and food in particular will look washed out in colour.
Surely this depends on the colour of the food? True that reds will look rather less bright than under tungsten.
Some would say that if the food looks ok under 'daylight' it can only look better in candlelight...
On 14 Oct 2004 "stuart noble" white ceiling. Can anyone suggest a tube that might be closer to daylight?
Yes. For kitchens the best tubes to use are Philips Colour 85. They are slightly warmer than daylight and won't make food look off. They are a bit more expensive that ordinary white (35) tubes.
Flourescent tubes generally flicker once or twice on startup if you use a normal starter switch. You can get instant starting chokes which don't use switches but they are less efficient.
Do you mean 835 (3500 K)?
Electronic ballasts don't flicker - well not in the same way as switch start - and are at least as efficient.
Hi,
Any details on the tubes?
cheers, Pete.
They're 31, but I'm not sure if this code still applies. They're rather old now, but still going strong.
The tubes themselves also operate more efficiently if driven with an AC supply of around 5kHz or more (around 5-10% more efficient). Electronic control gear tends to be in the 20-50kHz range, and hence well above this 5kHz boundary.
Note that you can still get some 100Hz flicker from some electronic control gear due to ripple on the internal DC supply rail. However, with old traditional ballasts, it is the 50Hz flicker which some people can see either from the tube ends (more so in peripheral vision than direct on), or from the whole tube if it conducts better in one direction than the other (common shortly before end-of-life failure). This 50Hz flicker is not produced by electronic control gear at all, and 100Hz flicker is not visible by humans unless you have something creating a stroboscopic effect with it.
Many thanks for all the suggestions. I'll go see what my local wholesaler stocks. Once the decorating's done I'll have a better idea of how light natural light will be.
"stuart noble" white ceiling. Can anyone suggest a tube that might be closer to daylight?
Mount the tubes so they cant be seen, and dont overdo the wattage. 2 very common errors with fl lighting. Unless youer sure about wattage, dimmable fittings would be good.
Fl is about 4x as efficient as filament, so the powers needed are very different.
NT
Could be Colour 83, now you mention it. I haven't bought one for a long time as my presemt kitchen has downlighters. I use compact flourescents in place of the reflector lamps.
daylight?
This kitchen is about 12 ft x 8ft with a 4ft wide window on one side, and units down the other. There is currently a 3x25W halogen centre light. Customer wants under cupboard lights, so I guess 4 x 350mm x 30W would cover the 12 ft run. How much wattage to put on top of the cupboards is the question. Would be nice to maybe get rid of the centre light altogether, but I guess it'll be trial and error.
Colours 83 and 84 are now known as 830 and 840, and they've added 827,
835 and 865 to the range:
Yes. My tiles and work surfaces are a dark colour, so the 'standard' 1" tubes I've used over the entire length are fine - a good match in level to the downlighters above the other surfaces. And I can dim them when not needing the full amount as working light. With light coloured surfaces it may be different.
"stuart noble" trial and error.
If you eman 4x30w fl, thats 120w, about equivalent to 480w of filament bulbs. Youre customer'll love you :)
NT
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