Suggested false ceiling height for LED light defusion effect

[u587162]

I would like to have a suspending ceiling on the edges of my ceiling which we will soon be fitting.

What is the ideal distance down from the original ceiling and ideal distance away from the wall to create the sort of nice soft glowing lights that we see in high end homes?

Also can any of you sparkies recommend a good LED light strip and transformers and other gizmos I should consider?

Thx.

 

[ericmark]

My father-in-law left about a 6 inch gap around the edge with fluorescent tubes in the gap. Looked good at the time but this was 1970. Today we have roles of LED lamps which are a lot smaller than the old fluorescent tubes so today 3 inches is likely enough. However the walls need to be perfect it shows up every imperfection.

The standard 2 foot square lamps really do a good job. However it makes the room look like an office, which is not surprising as we want good efficient lighting in an office so emulating an office will give good efficient lighting.

However unlike the office our living rooms need a variation of lighting be it a spot to read with or low lighting to watch TV our needs vary. So I look at my family's Turkish house and see how they have got around the lighting problem. Tungsten lamps means heat and already hot enough in Turkey so well before us they went to fluorescent lighting. This lighting is hard to dim so they used a 1/3 and 2/3 split so without any dimming switch they could vary the light to three levels. This is cheap and easy when building a house, but a lot of work to add latter.

Wall and ceiling colour makes a huge difference. With the recessed lighting one had to have white walls and ceilings. Lighting is an integrated system it has to take into account wall, celling and floor colours.

I have also found lumen required varies. My living room has 2000 lumen, My kitchen extension 2400 lumen original kitchen 5100 lumen and to be frank it's hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Original kitchen has dark coloured wall units. The dinning room is 2000 lumen and although half the size of living room looks really dark in comparison. The living room was 3400 lumen with CFL dropped to 2000 when I went to LED.

So from my experience the idea of fitting fixed size lamps goes against the grain. I want to be able to swap bulbs and so adjust lighting levels.

 

[Lectrician]

I think the OP is meaning a dropped ceiling around edges, lighting the ceiling.

 

[u587162]

I think the OP is meaning a dropped ceiling around edges, lighting the ceiling.

Thanks and nice pic, is that off the web or something you've done? Do you have a suggested drop and distance away from the wall to create that exact effect?