Browse Forums Lighting + Lighting Design 1 Oct 03, 2015 4:54 pm Hi everyone,
I'm offering my free expertise as an electrical building services engineer with >12 years experience in lighting design in the built environment, to assist you with lighting design for your new home or renovation. My professional experience is mostly in buildings other than single dwelling houses, but lighting design principles are fairly universal, and I have built and renovated my share of houses that I have done some fairly creative lighting installations with. I realise that it can be very expensive to hire an independent lighting designer as it would probably cost as much as some people's entire lighting budget for an everyday new home. So feel free to ask away, any lighting related question is fair game. *edit* The intention is that as this thread develops, the most common domestic lighting queries (e.g LED downlights) will have been discussed at length, so I encourage you to read through the thread before posting questions, as it is possible that your question may have been asked by somebody else and answered. There should also be some good general lighting info to pick up along the way. Everyone remember to play nice. Forum moderators may feel free to make this a sticky topic if they wish. Housekeeping: Disclaimer: This thread is not to be considered as professional advice. I do not accept liability for any comments made or any advice given, it is purely my opinion. Acting on any comments or advice provided by me is entirely at your own risk. Remember that all electrical work in Australia must be performed by a licenced electrical contractor. Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 2Oct 03, 2015 5:39 pm It's very nice of you to offer free expertise and hope people take the opportunity and value your offer Cheers Foremost Building Expert in Australia,assisting with building problems/disputes, building stage inspections,pre-contract review advice for peace of mind 200 blogs http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 3Oct 03, 2015 5:49 pm looking at building soon are there led downlights that more closely resemble incandescant ie no or greatly reduced delay on startup 2700 kelvin or better still 2400 similar light ouput and angle current home has r80 recessed lighting with either 75w or 100w globes depending on room and would basically like the new home to be the same thank-you for any advice you may be able to offer located in south east victoria if it matters Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 4Oct 03, 2015 10:42 pm There are plenty around that closely resemble halogen, but incandescent R80 not really. It's probably what you're used to, but the R80 downlights were a bit of a lighting mistake that we've tried to forget about... Most will be 2700k or 3000k. I haven't seen anything less than 2700k. 3000k is most common These are pretty close to a 35w halogen dichroic downlight both in colour temp and beam angle. http://au.enlitelighting.com/Lighting-P ... light.aspx They are about $15-20 from Haymans (electrical wholesaler) Building Services Engineer Renovating our 1960's modernist home in Brisbane https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=82091 Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 5Oct 04, 2015 8:02 am I am thinking of adding a couple of LED panels that I want to resemble small sky lights in size and light output. These will be in two areas of my house under construction. The rest of the house will be warm white LED downlights. My question is the selection of the LED panel, I am thinking a 600x600 LED panel will appear more skylight like than a 300x1200 or any rectangle sized panel and I am just not sure of the other specs. Would a cool white 40 watt somewhere in vicinity of 6500K appear skylight like? The two areas under consideration is the butler's pantry and the entry. My entry at the moment will only have a 4G entry door with translucent glazing as a light source, no sidelight glazing. The entry faces east but under a porch of course. I had planned to just surface mount the panels. Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 6Oct 04, 2015 11:38 am The lumen output of the 600x600 versus 1200x300 is likely to be pretty similar. I agree that te square one would look more like a skylight. 6500 is the closest colour to daylight. A 40W panel will provide a lot of light, if anything I might suggest a little too much, but that comes down to personal preference really Building Services Engineer Renovating our 1960's modernist home in Brisbane https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=82091 Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 8Oct 04, 2015 12:48 pm 1960sModernistHome There are plenty around that closely resemble halogen, but incandescent R80 not really. It's probably what you're used to, but the R80 downlights were a bit of a lighting mistake that we've tried to forget about... Most will be 2700k or 3000k. I haven't seen anything less than 2700k. 3000k is most common These are pretty close to a 35w halogen dichroic downlight both in colour temp and beam angle. http://au.enlitelighting.com/Lighting-P ... light.aspx They are about $15-20 from Haymans (electrical wholesaler) thank-you for your advice could not find anything in the specs reguarding turn on delay times what was the mistake with the r80 lights i know they develop a lot of heat and you cannot insulate properly but imo they are the best light i have ever had Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 9Oct 04, 2015 5:09 pm They're extremely inefficient and have a terrible lamp life. There should not be any noticeable time delay with decent quality LEDs. I have a mixture of LED and halogen track lights in my master bedroom and the LEDs switch on about half a second quicker than the halogens. Anything with a transformer or electronic driver (such as 12v halogens or LEDs) will take a fraction of a second longer than a purely resistive mains voltage incandescent lamp. Unfortunately the laws of physics are what they are. In the former the electrons have to travel through complex electronic circuits. In the latter, they just go straight through a filament. Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 11Oct 05, 2015 7:04 pm Just in the planning stage of a two story home and have contracted a builder. The cost they charge for spot lights seems a bit inflated - I'm not a huge fan of spot lights everywhere anyway and have a few included on the plan but wondered if it is possible to add them after completion or does the access issue prohibit adding any later? Thanks in advance Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 12Oct 05, 2015 8:16 pm Installing anything later on in the ground floor is very difficult. Second floor should be ok provided you have a decent roof space. When you say spotlight, do you mean a recessed downlight? Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 13Oct 05, 2015 9:21 pm My builder is providing 9W S9001 GU10 LED as standard. I think this may be not bright enough and looking to upgrade to 10W S9065 Wave LED, they provide about 800 lumen and 90 beam angle. how many do I need for an area of 6M by 7M? Will 6 of them be sufficient? Will the daylight 6000K, be like the cool white and a blue tint to everything in the room? thanks for your help in advance. 18/03/15 Deposit 02/09/15 CDC 22/09/15 Slab 05/12/15 Frames 15/12/15 Brick started. 11/04/16 Roof start 04/05/16 Roof finish 09/07/16 Gyprock. Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 14Oct 06, 2015 5:58 am I would encourage you to upgrade to the higher spec one. GU10 means it is just an old style downlight with a retrofit style LED lamp fitted. Retrofit style lamps are generally a fairly poor engineering compromise. They are trying to fit all of the LED technology into the shape of a halogen globe, which is not the best idea. Generally results in substandard performance and short life spans as heat doesn't dissipate very well. LED is a different technology and requires luminaires that have been designed specifically for LED, with a proper constant current driver and a good heat sink on the back. It would be like buying a petrol car and trying to modify it to run on diesel. It might be possible, but not a good solution and you'd be much better off buying a diesel car in the first place. I think 6 of the 10w downlights in a 6x7m area would be sufficient, but I would also suggest you think about placement, i.e. locate the downlights where you require the most light, rather than just setting them out in a grid. Also think about switching. for example, you might have downlights over particular chairs and have them switched separately so you can just have one light on to read, instead of the the whole room on. Food for thought at least... As for colour temp, I always use 3000k (warm white) for residential. I use 4000k for offices, school classrooms, hospitals and the like. I pretty much never use 5000k or higher. In your own home it comes down to personal preference but 3000k is my recommendation. 3000k has the best colour rendering index, which means colours look their best and most brilliant under 3000k lights. That's why art galleries and clothing stores generally use 3000k. 2700-3000k is closest to incandescent and halogen lights. 6000k is generally referred to as daylight or cool white. It has a blue hue. It doesn't show colours very well due to the blue undertones. Personally I find daylight/cool white to be uninviting and cold. I find that a room lit with daylight/cool white is uncomfortable to be in. Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 15Oct 08, 2015 4:48 pm Hi, Thank you for your kind offer. We are in the process of building a new house and about to start rough-in electrical. We have an opportunity to make a few changes with the electrical company to our lighting/electrical plan. I have attached our electrical plan for the two floors. We are planning to get a mix of down lights and pendants. We would also have bedside/floor lamps/table lamps as required. There are some changes in lighting I have noted in the original plan - Additional down blights in bed 5 on the ground floor - additional external light between kitchen and dining - additional down lights in the bathroom and master ensuite. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Do you have any suggestions for improvement? Also with down lights we have been considering a few options. We are really keen the down light to be very discrete (85-90mm diameter), white, IP rating of 44 and not have too much glare as they are going in bedrooms and living areas. We have 2.7m ceiling. As we are planning to get nice pendants we don't want the down lights to stand out. The only light we have seen so far that's friendly on our budget (below $30) is the below Domus light. https://www.golights.com.au/led-downlig ... s-lighting Our only concern is if 8w is bright enough? We will be getting warm white. On average we are having about 1 down light for 3 sqm (i.e 12 sqm room has 4) Thanks in advance viewtopic.php?t=78985 Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 16Oct 08, 2015 8:02 pm Okay, I'm just going to do a bullet point list room by room as I see it. This is purely my opinion... nothing you have done jumps as to me as being "wrong" - just offering my suggestions for improvements... A lot of these things are just handy tips that I have implemented on various homes of my own over the years and have found to be good things. Dining Locate the downlights near parts of solid wall, about 500mm off the wall to shine on paintings etc. Use tilt adjustable downlights with about a 30-45 degree beam. Kitchen Shift the row of 3 downlights closer to your overheads - probably about in line with the edge of your bench top. You want the light to light up your cupboards and bench - not the floor Consider LED strip profile lighting under overhead cupboards to shine on bench, and/or below benchtop on island bench for feature. Family Similar to the dining, I would position the downlights where I want them to shine on wall hangings. You'll find that if you shine them toward the wall you will get enough reflected light in the room to provide ample ambient light - after all, it's just a family room, you won't be doing open heart surgery in there also maybe consider dimmers Outdoor room I would be wary about putting pendants outdoors. I think they will get damaged by the weather and will probably degrade quite quickly. Garage Consider having a motion sensor so the light in the garage comes on automatically. The lights on the door openers are pathetic. Bathroom/Powder I would steer away from pendants in here and go for functional light. Also, you cannot have pendants above a bath or shower (despite what you see on TV shows like The Block - it does not comply with AS3000 Wiring Rules and is both illegal and unsafe - I have had the same argument with interior designers more times than I can remember) Bed 1 I would position the ceiling fan so that it is over the centre of your bed. We also have a large master bedroom, I resisted the urge to put it in the centre of the room and put it over the centre of the bed instead - very glad we did, it works much better. In the smaller bedrooms it doesn't matter really. I would have the fan controller next to the bed, or get a remote controlled fan - so you don't need to get out of bed during the night to turn the fan on/off I would have a 3 way switching for the main bedroom lights, one next to the door, and one on each side of the bed I have Clipsal USB charging sockets integrated into our light switches on either side of the bed for charging mobile phones. The light switches, USB sockets and general power sockets are all built in to our built-in bed head/bedsides. These light switches are only about 700mm off the ground so you can reach them laying in bed. Downlights I have some of the Domus Deco 13w in corridors in my home. They are well priced and very bright, but very glarey. I picked them up for about $26ea. Despite them being glarey, I think they would be fine for the other bedrooms, corridors, utility rooms etc. Maybe you could reduce the quantity of downlights in bedrooms to 2 and use the 13w versions, which will save you some money. Then you can put that money towards nicer low glare downlights for the living areas and your main bedroom. Here are some low glare options for you, probably around the $40-60 range: http://www.greenilluminate.com.au/produ ... /invis-10/ https://www.golights.com.au/led-downlig ... s-lighting https://www.golights.com.au/led-downlig ... s-lighting http://enlitelighting.com/Lighting-Prod ... light.aspx (this one is under $30 and is tilt adjustable - you could use this everywhere...) Building Services Engineer Renovating our 1960's modernist home in Brisbane https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=82091 Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 17Oct 08, 2015 8:40 pm Thank you for all the great hints. Much appreciate I had not even thought of some of these items viewtopic.php?t=78985 Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 18Oct 09, 2015 10:33 am Thanks for your advice so far on this forum 1960sModernistHome. I have a quick question. I have ordered some domus down lights from your suggestions. I am installing in a new build. What is your opinion on using heat shields for the insulation? Or should I cut the insulation out around and protrude the downlight through? Re: Ask a lighting design engineer - general Q&A 19Oct 09, 2015 10:50 am This is probably not that helpful sorry, but my best advice is to follow the manufacturer's instructions (should be inside the Domus box when you open it up). The instructions should tell you how closely you can install the insulation, and whether a shroud is acceptable. In practice, LED downlights do not get anywhere near as hot as halogen downlights, so they are not a fire risk in that sense. But if you cover them with insulation it affects the heat disspation of the luminaire. The main issue with shrouding that I can see is that it may restrict heat disspation from the LED heat sink on the back of the downlight, which in turn may affect performance and possibly warranty or premature failures. Building Services Engineer Renovating our 1960's modernist home in Brisbane https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=82091 You should check your detail drawings, it may show downpipe within brick pier. 14 14555 I work with owner, he/she is my man on the ground and I instruct them when to visit the site and take photos and I have other tools in the bag. 4 15874 Ardo That is so funny! I wonder how many people know who Larry Haun is these days. I have a couple of young guys we call Mo 1 & Mo 2 who run a crew of 6 boys and… 9 15837 |