With the ever increasing electricity prices I'm becoming pretty paranoid about our electrcity usage. I was planning on having a ceiling full of LV lights in our new kitchen but how do these compare to standard bulbs.eg . does a 20W LV bulb use a third of the energy of a standard 60W or is there some fancy conversion factor I have to apply.
Thanks
Jim
The LV lamps themselves are more efficient than mains lamps. However, using LV downlighters for general room lighting is just about the most horrendously inefficient thing you can do, as you are using the floor as a reflector for the light to reach most of the areas of the room. It's not uncommon to find such a room with 600W of lighting which is dimmer everywhere that matters than it would be with a single 60W light bulb hanging in the middle. Forget about using downlighters for general room lighting.
A very effective scheme which is often described here is to use fluorescent lamps hidden on tops of wall cupboards and reflecting off a brilliant white ceiling for general lighting, and under cupboard fluorescent lamps for task lighting on the worktops. If you have an area with no wall cupboards such as the sink, using a downlighter or two over that for task lighting is appropriate use of downlighters. Another option would be a wall mounted uplighter to light the ceiling in that area.
Summed up perfectly.
If you go for uplighting, stay away from those plaster uplighters, theyre a pretty poor choice of uplighter, as the bulb is much too close to the wall.
If you go linear fl, google trough lighting.
If youre determined to have downlighters, there are 2 more efficient options. One is cfl downlighting.
The other better option is to use 5w filament bulbs instead of 50w, mouting them relatively shallow so the eye sees the bare filament directly as well as via the reflectors. This gives the visual effect of halogens without the power guzzle. Now provide the bulk of the room lighting with fl or cfl uplighting.
NT
11*50W mains halogens in my kitchen :-}
Try replacing them with 35w versions. My kitchen has 8x halogens, and going from 50w to 35w didn't affect the overall room lighting much but reduced the overall load by 120w. When these bulbs eventually fail I may give 20w bulbs a go to see if I can get away with them. They can be bought pretty cheaply on ebay in 10's.
Alan.
15 in mine, but recently replaced te bulbs with the Megaman 11w ones!
White tiles on the floor though!
I might give 'em a whirl, but i`m quite awkward when it comes to lighting - I prefer all parts of the room to be visible and very well lit without shadows etc as far as humanly possible - I ended up splitting the kitchen lighting into a (3x + 4x) and (4x) arrangement so you didn't get instantly blinded when switching on :-}
My living room only has 4*60W lamps, but they're "regular" incandescant lamps rather than halogens, so the light distribution is a little better
- plus they're mounted one either side of the chimney breast, with a pair mounted centrally on the opposite wall - they're on a dimmer, so no CFLs for me :-}
that makes downlighting a poor choice then. Even shadowless lighting is one of the big plusses of uplighting.
NT
They're all directional halogens, and not a lot of places get an appreciable shadow when you're stood in front of a surface compared to conventional lamps (its a long thin kitchen, so I cross-illuminate from one fitting back to other areas) - they're set up as two straight rails of 4 lamps, and the central one is set up as a triangle.
20W is 20W. and is one third of 60W.
LV spots are good only in two ways - they last many times longer than a conventional bulb, or mains halogen, and they are slightly more efficient than either of those.
I happen to think that there are far more important things to tackle in energy terms than what lights you use, myself, but if low consumption is your target, then only CFL offer any significant advantages.
Hi,
What you need to bear in mind is luminous efficiency of different types of lighting, eg fluorescent, halogen.
Also how effectively the light is used makes a big difference, eg directional LV downlighters pointing down at a dark floor/worktop won't be very effective for ambient lighting.
For halogen a look at a good lighting catalog will be helpful:
For fluorescent the colour balance (CRI) is important:
A look through the archives of this group will be very useful:
cheers, Pete.
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.