How many spots for lounge?

[chriselevate]

I’m having my lounge ceiling reboarded and skimmed and before that’s done I’ve got an electrician coming to fit recessed spot lights instead of the current ceiling rose.

The room dimensions are 4.5 x 4m so I was wondering how many spots you’d suggest fitting and what sort of distance between them would look/work well?

Thanks for any help & advice or tricks you can suggest.

 

[Taylortwocities]

Put on your tin hat..........

 

[John D v2.0]

People on here are not generally fans of spot lights. They look good if you don't like to see lights, but they are very directional.
If you do want, I'd recommend LEDs to avoid a huge electric bill. Look at the width angle of the beam and make sure they are close enough to light the room at the right spacing. Go for a low wattage to avoid the place being too bright but plenty of them

 

[Doggit]

And it's difficult to get them evenly spaced, as you don't know what's in the void until you drill into it. I fitted some in a kitchen recently, 16x5 watt leds from toolstation, and they are way brighter than the 5.5 watt spots that were there before hand. Could have done with them being dimmable, but the kitchens damned bright.

 

[chriselevate]

Yeah I’ll be using LEDs and not halogen for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. How big was the kitchen where you used 16 toolstation spots?

I realise that joists and space in the void will dictate their location to a certain extent but can anyone give me and idea of how many I should be looking to get into a room that size.

Thanks

 

[ban-all-sheds]

None.

The fact that you realise you need lots of them shows that you realise you're trying to light up a room with lights which are designed to not light up rooms.

They are called spotlights because that is what they do - they produce a spot of light. Great for highlighting display items or architectural features. Piggin' useless for general room lighting.

 

[ericmark]

A pearl lamp spreads the light be it the tube or bulb or a defuser fitted over them, the spot light is not really designed for general lighting it is to light some special point, be it a picture or a dark corner. They can when aimed at a white ceiling use the ceiling or a wall will do the same and spread the light, but without something to spread the light it is turned into heat rather than light the room.

So you can use a calculator which may tell you for a room of 18 m² you need 3500 lumen, but that only works if the lumen can get into the room, you could place a pearl defuser under each lamp to increase the area to 10 in² but it would look rotten, the problem with the LED spot many have cooling fins so not even the 16/8" the MR16 refers to so in the main they are not suitable unless a very low wattage and loads of them, so 14 x 3W may work, but 6 x 7W will not, same lumen but not enough surface area.

I have actually wondered if you could arrange them in the design of the Great Bear, it looks like a planetarium so why not go the whole hog?

 

[Doggit]

The kitchen is 6mx3m

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Important info you've left out- ceiling height. Spotlights throw a beam of various degrees wide- typically 16, 30 or 45 degrees wide. You want some light on the walls but maybe not too much- remember all that geometry you sat through at school thinking I'll never need this again. You do now!

Clue. A 90 degree beam would form a pool of light 2 metres in diameter from a height of 1 metre. 45 degree beam gives you 1 metre diameter from the same height.

Have a look on Pinterest to see what others have done, decide what effect you want and take it from there.

 

[JohnW2]

They are called spotlights because that is what they do - they produce a spot of light.

Indeed - that's what narrow beam angle downlighters do, and are designed to do.

Wide beam angle ones are a totally different kettle of fish.

Kind Regards, John

 

[Notch7]

Indeed - that's what narrow beam angle downlighters do, and are designed to do.

Wide beam angle ones are a totally different kettle of fish.

Kind Regards, John

Im just doing some kitchen lights, using a track. Having just looked into beam angle, it is really quite important. There are a few websites that provide advice on this

https://www.downlightsdirect.co.uk/advice/downlights/which-beam-angle-to-choose/

Downlighters provide perfectly good general lighting in a room, although with a lounge, wall, table floor lamps are good to provide softer mood lighting.

Im not sure if ceiling spotlights would be annoying near a TV

 

[JohnW2]

Im not sure if ceiling spotlights would be annoying near a TV

I certainly wouldn't think that one would want to deliberating illuminate the screen of a TV. Provided the position of the TV is known (and likley to remain unchanged), that can be taken into account when deciding upon the positioning of the downlights.

The one situation in which downlights probably are a bad idea is over the 'head end' of a bed, but that's because people lay down on a bed (and presumably don't want to be looking straight into a light source!).

Kind Regards, John

 

[securespark]

Ban, to be fair, the latest LED lamps are making it easier to achieve all-over illumination. I have a lounge measuring 5.5 x 4m. I decided on 6 recessed downlighters, with two eyeballs at one end intended to highlight some glass display cabinets either side of the fireplace. Supplementing the recessed lighting are 4 x table lamps, switched via a dimmer at the door.

With wide angle (120°) 690 lumen 10W warm white LED lamps in, they do a very fair job of illuminating that space. We generally don't have the table lamps on at the same time as the recessed, it's one or the other.