Fluorescent lighting advice

[Paul Moore]

Hello,

I've converted a room upstairs so that it can be used as a workshop by my wife. She likes to do all sorts of arts and crafts, and I was wondering what would be the best lighting to use in the room. The room itself is quite low, about 2m20, and quite large, about 7m by 4.5m. I was thinking of fluorescent lighting, but there seems to be a huge range of types and lighting colours available.

Could anyone give me some advice on how to select lighting, or point me to some information.

Many thanks, Paul

[Harry Bloomfield]

On 05/02/2004 Paul Moore opined:-

The cheapest fitting and tubes are the 5 foot size (1500). For that area I would be guessing at perhaps 4 x 5 foot to provide a reasonable level of lighting, perhaps with additional lighting over working areas. Perfectly symmetrical layouts do not necessarily provide the best lighting pattern. No doubt others will disagree with the number. They should be laid out side to side in line with your shoulders, when working at the workbench. Even better is laid out at 45 deg, with the near end of the fitting on your right, if right handed. Electronic units are little more efficient than traditional ballast types and traditional types do tend to cause a buzzing noise.

It might also be worth spending a little more to buy fitting which direct the light straight down, hiding the tubes from your eyes. Clip onto the tube covers used to be available to do this.

Ensure the switches are suitably rated for inductive type loads.

[Christian McArdle]

You should ensure that you use high frequency electronic ballasts. These prevent flicker, which could be annoying or injurous working for long periods under. You should also use a tri-phosphor tube with a carefully selected colour temperature for the work required. Some incandescent or halogen task lighting should be provided, particularly if the work involves working with colour, as the fluorescent light provides a discontinuous spectrum that can distort colours under certain conditions compared with the more continuous one of incandescent lighting.

Christian.

[N. Thornton]

Without knowing much about the prime issues your choice will be based on, not really. Ceilling type, any other significant issues such as cost, whether those arts and crafts require full spectrum lighting, etc etc.

In the absense of more information, you could check out the recent thread on fluorescent lighting where I posted some pieces on how to make fluorescent into a decent option. That may open your horizons up a bit.

Regards, NT

[Paulus]

Thanks for all the advice.

She likes mainly to paint. I don't know if that would have a bearing on the choice of tube colour.

[John Rouse]

In article , Paulus writes

Use 4700k colour matching tubes.

J.

[N. Thornton]

Hi, just caught this by chance. Yes it would, very much. If she's serious about it you'll want full spectrum tubes, and avoid all the others. Such tubes are more money, but still worth it.

Most fl tubes are a mix of a limited set of flourescent colours which gives a discontinuous spectrum: the bad tubes (cool whites) use few, while the better quality ones use a mix of more frequencies to give good cover, but if you need 100% on the mark colour rendering across the whole spectrum then you need the more specialist tubes that will do that.

Still going to be a better option than filaments, will give better colour rendering than CFL, which are just folded fluorescents. The other option for serious art work is halogen, which is full spectrum, but much more power hungry than fluorescent, and the bulbs run intensely hot.

Regards, NT