My new house has a 20' x 12' kitchen with 12 x 50w MR16 halogen downlighters in the ceiling. That's a staggering 600 watts of power which no doubt helps to keep it warm in winter but does bugger all for my electric bills and the light output is terrible. The kitchen in my last house only had a single 60w flourescent tube and you could actually see what you were doing.
Suggestions please.
With cfl uplighting it would be happy with 1/10th that much. I dont mean those dreaded plaster things.
NT
I had the same when I moved into this house 2 lots of 5 halogen. In the short term I have replaced half of them with 30w (might even be 20w) The top half of the kitchen I will keep with a mix of 30/60w but the bottom half I will put in a flourescent tube when I carpet the bedroom above it as this will give me access to the electrics. The bottom half is the cooker/sink wife part of the kitchen and she finds it too dull, the top half is dining plus it has a window for extra light.
Got to love that phraseology. I'm going to steal that. Sorry. :)
You can generally change them to 35 or even 20 watt versions with very little apparent loss of light - usually because it isn't getting to where it's needed anyway. Very common with spots. Your old fashioned florry gave a near omni directional light output - which may not look as pretty but is more efficient for a working area.
These types of fittings are very popular because they are cheap and look good. That they are terrible for doing the actual job is neither here nor there to designers and builders.
But I like them too - but confine their use to where the decorative effect is more important than the illumination.
--
*You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me *Dave Plowman snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound.
In article , Dave Baker writes
How is your ceiling height?
I've a kitchen of similar dims with good high Georgian ceilings that I light with 8 evenly spaced pendant lights with good sized white glass tulip shades. I light half with 40W incandescents and the rest with 11W energy savers.
The incandescents alternate in a zig zag with the energy savers to ensure a reasonably even and instant bright light when you switch on, with the energy savers coming up to speed in a few mins. They're switchable in pairs to light either the whole area or just the breakfasting end.
There are extra 300mm fluorescent strips under the upper cabs to fill in light on the worksurfaces round the side but the main peninsular workspace is well lit by the overheads.
Possibly a bit old school classroom like but I like it.
Total all on power 170W
To me, they look cheap and tell me the kitchen was designed by someone who is clueless.
(Of course, they aren't cheap to run, just dirt cheap to buy.)
designers and builders.
more important than the illumination.
Downlighers do have their place, but that's never for providing general lighting in a room.
re to designers and =A0builders.
ect is more important than the illumination.
Quite. If you like the look of the halogens, they could perhaps be changed for 5w, and concealed uplighting also added.
NT
Some might be useful as work area lighting if you replace them with lower wattage eyeball directional downlighters. If you can get access to fit a permanent live, you could also replace one with an emergency light
- the kitchen and above the stairs are two places I always have them. The rest could be replaced with surface mount fittings that take low wattage CFLs. Last time I was in there, my local electrical wholesaler had some quite attractive surface mount fittings at under £10 each. If you can get access to the wiring, another option would be to re-wire the lights into banks, so that you don't need to have all 12 on at once.
Colin Bignell
Indeed in a kitchen. It is the house workshop and needs decent illumination. If it is somewhere you eat too, no harm in having them as an alternative to give 'mood' lighting for that.
Indeed. Again.
Faced with a similar problem I am currently looking at these two potential solutions; 2 of these somewhat industrial surface HF fluorescent units
-- rbel
Change the lamps over to LED's?
To me, they look cheap and tell me the kitchen was designed by someone who is clueless.
(Of course, they aren't cheap to run, just dirt cheap to buy.)
Downlighers do have their place, but that's never for providing general lighting in a room.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I watched on of these make-over progs where the developer had replaced the lighting in the property (IIRC it was a flat) with some obscene number of down-lighters.
I was thinking, what a moron, that will be horrid to live in. But of course the presenter gushed over the wonderful lighting design
tim
it's still basically a 60° spotlight, which given it's really designed for large office use with no glare, is exactly what I'd expect.
That's not what I'd want in a kitchen though. It will light the floor extremely well. Probably good enough for seeing into the under worktop cupboards too. It will be cutting off by the time you get to the worktops, and nothing into the top cupboards. In a kitchen (if it's really used for cooking), the high efficiency polished reflector will get dirty, and will be virtually impossible to clean.
That sounds expensive, but I'm not very familiar with the normal pricing of these.
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.