Kitchen lights advice please

[andyfr]

I called in to see a lighting designer and after a brief chat it was suggested that we could go with the GU10 fittings and use the 11w Megaman cool white bulbs like this: http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/FLCFL200W.html

What are your thoughts on this? I assume they aren't HF types so would they give me a headache like the normal tubes?

 

[Steve]

They are HF.

The new ones are much better than the GU10s they brought out a couple of years back. Buy from Ebay in bulk - much cheaper (£4 each instead of £8 )

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I called in to see a lighting designer and after a brief chat it was suggested that we could go with the GU10 fittings

I sincerely hope it was a free consultation, as the guy was clearly an incompetent and ignorant buffoon.

GU10 luminaires, no matter what sort of lamps you put in them, are useless, pointless and unworkable carp - please come to your senses and fit something which is actually going to work properly.

 

[andyfr]

GU10 luminaires, no matter what sort of lamps you put in them, are useless, pointless and unworkable carp - please come to your senses and fit something which is actually going to work properly.

I did look at your other suggestions but they looked overkill for a domestic situation. What exactly is wrong with GU10 fittings? We have been using MR16 fittings for years and find them ideal for use in the kitchen. You are obviously very experienced in this area so I take your comments seriously. If you could spell out for a novice what's wrong with the GU10s and suggest an alternative which will give a similar kind of task lighting I would be grateful.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

They produce small pools of intense light.

They are spotlights, designed to highlight individual items in a display situation, and are totally unsuited to the job of evenly illuminating a whole room.

Unless you want your room illumination to be very uneven.

You yourself have recognised the problem with them:

we would need about 16 using 800 watts!

- You've realised that 800W of lighting for that room is crazy.

The problem does not stem from the use of halogen lamps, and therefore can't be fixed by switching to CFLs or LEDs, the problem stems from the shape of the cone of light emerging from a 50mm lamp with a parabolic reflector. Sure, you'd use less electricity with CFLd or LEDs, but only in comparison with incandescent MR16 lamps - if you compared the amount you'd need for proper illumination of the room and you'd find the same relative craziness - 16 CFLs is 176W, but the same amount of fluorescent lighting in a different format would be far too much, just as 800W of incandescent lighting in a different format would be far too much.

You said the ones I suggested were overkill - I'm not sure what's overkill about a few 200mm frosted glass discs "floating" just below the ceiling, so I'm probably not going to be able to point you at anything - all I can say is start looking for flush/recessed/surface luminaires designed from scratch to take fluorescent lamps other than the incandescent replacement formats with their own built-in control gear. Look at LED lights, again not the replacement format ones. Look at cold cathode. Look at induction lighting.

There are all sorts of alternatives out there.

 

[Steve]

They produce small pools of intense light..

The CFL ones dont, as andyfr says he has been recommended to use. They are flood lights as opposed to spots.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

OK - then they produce small pools of not intense light.

The point is if he needs 16 luminaires in a space that size then they are clearly not suitable for providing general overall room illumination.

And recommended by whom?

Someone who started with a blank sheet and came up with the best possible design, or someone who wasn't prepared to challenge a client brief of "I want lots of small recessed downlights"?

Was he really a lighting designer, aware of all the latest products, not just the mass-market retail ones, or was he more of a stylist?

 

[andyfr]

It's becoming clear the the GU10 fittings are a bit like Marmite. Our lounge is about the same size as the new extension and in there we have two pendants with 100 watt incandescent bulbs in them. They light the room fine but we never have them on, instead we have two wall lights on a dimmer and three table lamps and that makes a much more pleasing lighting arrangement for us.

We could just have a couple of pendants in the new kitchen and that would give us complete room illumination but we actually like the wide angle pools of intense white light the MR16s give so we are looking for the best alternative there is.

To be fair when I went to the lighting design place the lighting designer wasn't in and I spoke to his colleague. I mentioned our preference for the downlights so that will be why the GU10 suggestion was made. We are going to make an appointment with the designer and we will keep open minds.