Browse Forums Lighting + Lighting Design 1 Mar 20, 2015 11:40 am Hi everyone, we're building a new house (you can see my thread in my signature) and providing our own lights. We have downlights nearly everywhere in the living areas other than a pendant over the dining table. Our colour selection is all cool greys. I'm confused about the downlights - with a cool colour scheme, should I have warm lights or cool lights? will the cool lights make it feel too clinical? LED downlights are pretty expensive so I don't want to buy 20 of them in the wrong shade! Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 2Mar 20, 2015 12:07 pm Ilaeria Hi everyone, we're building a new house (you can see my thread in my signature) and providing our own lights. We have downlights nearly everywhere in the living areas other than a pendant over the dining table. Our colour selection is all cool greys. I'm confused about the downlights - with a cool colour scheme, should I have warm lights or cool lights? will the cool lights make it feel too clinical? LED downlights are pretty expensive so I don't want to buy 20 of them in the wrong shade! I looked into this and will be going warm everywhere except for some clinical type area like kitchen and bathrooms. you can view the difference in images in google the difference. warm is like the incandescent type of lighting. Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 3Mar 20, 2015 12:12 pm Thanks for the reply good59. Yeah my confusion is more over the effect my cool grey colours will have on warm vs cool lights - i.e., will they cancel out warm? Will they make cool feel even cooler and clinical? Where I am living now is a rental with a warm colour scheme and we have a mixture of both - but the warm actually makes the house feel dark, and so I think I prefer cool, but then I wonder if that's because warm light + warm peach house = dark, or if it really is my preference. It's so confusing! Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 4Mar 20, 2015 12:36 pm Ilaeria Thanks for the reply good59. Yeah my confusion is more over the effect my cool grey colours will have on warm vs cool lights - i.e., will they cancel out warm? Will they make cool feel even cooler and clinical? Where I am living now is a rental with a warm colour scheme and we have a mixture of both - but the warm actually makes the house feel dark, and so I think I prefer cool, but then I wonder if that's because warm light + warm peach house = dark, or if it really is my preference. It's so confusing! It is confusing and I was only going with my preference as I know our walls are going to be a very light colour close to an off white. I suppose it is what you like and that there is no black and white answers on the issue. Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 5Mar 20, 2015 12:41 pm Yeah it seems like, as you say, there's no "rule" because everything I've read is different! I'm just so worried about buying a whole bunch of one or the other and having it look terrible. At least with regular light fittings its easy and relatively cheap to just replace the bulb...I'll have to keep thinking about it! Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 6Mar 20, 2015 12:54 pm Ilaeria Yeah it seems like, as you say, there's no "rule" because everything I've read is different! I'm just so worried about buying a whole bunch of one or the other and having it look terrible. At least with regular light fittings its easy and relatively cheap to just replace the bulb...I'll have to keep thinking about it! Buy one of each to start with. Mine will plug in to surface socket in ceiling so are interchangable to see the result. I am not sure if you are looking at plug in type or hard wired. Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 7Mar 20, 2015 12:56 pm Yeah that's an option goody59. My preference is for the plug type I think yeah because it's easier to replace them. So I guess I can just give the sparky on the day the plugs, and plug them in myself later maybe... Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 8Mar 28, 2015 8:55 pm Personally, I use warm white in residential everywhere. But yes, laundry and kitchen you might like cool white. Keep in mind that the best colour rendition is provided by incandescent light, which is closest to 3000k (warm white). Building Services Engineer Renovating our 1960's modernist home in Brisbane https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=82091 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 9Mar 31, 2015 4:35 pm Hi, Sounds like you're in a bit of a dilemma!? It does come down to personal preference in the end, however in my experience, I would definitely recommend the warm white. It brings out the natural colours of everything, where the Cool White / Daylight drowns out the other colours. So going by this, the warm white is definitely the way to go. LED technology has come a long way in the the last year or so, and they have improved immensely I hope this helps. Kind Regards, Kristin Lighting Expert Phone -1300 798 220 Email - service@golights.com.au Website - http://www.golights.com.au Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 10Mar 31, 2015 4:58 pm Thanks for the responses Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 11Mar 31, 2015 6:03 pm We went with cool white, I hate dullness, it's either bright or dark, lol. And my opinion is warm just didn't light up enough to see everything, we have ALOT of lights going in our place. Probably too much some might think. But for me everything has to be lit up with the lights on or with them off there's to be no light coming through, lol Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 12Mar 31, 2015 6:06 pm Nic and Shell 1 We went with cool white, I hate dullness, it's either bright or dark, lol. And my opinion is warm just didn't light up enough to see everything, we have ALOT of lights going in our place. Probably too much some might think. But for me everything has to be lit up with the lights on or with them off there's to be no light coming through, lol I feel the same We have warm white here now and it doesn't feel as bright as I'd like. We'll go to Beacon on the weekend most likely and talk to them about it too. Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 13Mar 31, 2015 6:14 pm Ilaeria Nic and Shell 1 We went with cool white, I hate dullness, it's either bright or dark, lol. And my opinion is warm just didn't light up enough to see everything, we have ALOT of lights going in our place. Probably too much some might think. But for me everything has to be lit up with the lights on or with them off there's to be no light coming through, lol I feel the same We have warm white here now and it doesn't feel as bright as I'd like. We'll go to Beacon on the weekend most likely and talk to them about it too. Well you've answered your own question, lol. So your providing your own down lights aswell? We went to the lighting superstore at helensvale homeworld (do you know where that is? ) they have a display room with cool and warm lights with atom branded lights. (we bought our fans and lights from these guys) Also lighting illusions (Macgregor store) has a display room aswell, with atom and martec brand. Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 14Mar 31, 2015 6:18 pm Yeah we looked at them too but we weren't impressed, we'll check again though, we were going to the Beacon there. If they have a display room that might help. With Plantation they do the install but we have to supply all our own fittings, they don't have an option to choose fittings from them. We were hoping some places would have Easter sales and we could get them while they'e on sale. Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 15Mar 31, 2015 6:59 pm That's fair enough, there not for everyone they seemed fine for us (in the display room anyway, haha) , as I said we are getting alot more than probably normal people would so we should be fine for light. I'm not a fan of Beacon myself, there expensive and don't really have much in way of a closed of display room. Not to mention we wanted to see how a fan felt with it on and they couldn't show us because it's not wired up to work Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 16Mar 31, 2015 8:33 pm I don't want to smear any retailer in particular, but keep in mind that certain retailers out there have massive cost overheads by sponsoring TV shows, having big glossy brochures and paying huge rent in prestigious shopping centres. This means they charge a large amount for what are essentially cheap Chinese products. If you look around, there is a good chance that you can find comparable products at a much lower price, or much higher quality products at around the same price. For example, I have had several lighting reps come to see me in the past couple of weeks showing me various domestic quality LED dow lights between $18-40. I got a catalogue in the letterbox on the weekend for a high profile lighting retailer where they were advertising very similar products at $40-90. A good place to start would be electrical wholesalers like Ideal, Haymans, Middys, Cetnaj, Lawrence & Hanson and others. Even better if you know an electrician who has a trade account. Some of these wholesalers do have showrooms too. You could end up walking away with quality well known brand named lights Philips, Osram, Aurora, for half the price of the rebadged crap that se retailers are selling for $40-90 each. It pays to do your homework. By no means are these big name lighting retailers the be-all of lighting, far from it in fact (in my professional opinion) Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 17Mar 31, 2015 8:46 pm Thanks for the tips. I have been doing homework. I've looked and am continuing to look at several different lighting retailers. Our preference is for Beacon at the moment because of their guarantee and the fact they are willing to offer a discount for a house-lot of lighting. We'll be getting several quotes before buying. I appreciate you're trying to help, but please don't assume that just because someone says "Beacon" they are clueless. Also, most suppliers will be importing from China or elsewhere. "Made in China" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Also, your comparison of prices seems to be comparing wholesale with retail pricing (I may be wrong but that's the impression I got). While there's still a significant mark-up it's not exactly comparing apples with apples. Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 18Mar 31, 2015 9:56 pm The prices quoted are what someone off the street could buy them from the wholesaler. The wholesale price is actually about 10-20% less than what I've quoted. These all come with a minimum 3 year replacement warranty from manufacturers who are well respected in the lighting industry, and do everything up to top spec architectural lighting where $500 might get you one downlight... You're right - pretty much anything in that price bracket will come from China, Malaysia or Korea. Maybe Eastern Europe towards the upper end. Even if its Philips, Osram, Sylvania etc. The important thing is the profile of the parent company and their attitude to quality assurance - if you want a Chinese company to manufacture a light fitting, you need to keep a close eye on them. That's not intended to be racist or anything, that's just the way it is doing business over there. Ask anyone who gets things made in China. Batch quality consistency, for example, can be all over the place unless it is closely scrutinized. There are new fly-by-night lighting companies popping up every day who will learn this lesson the hard way, get a whole stack of warranty claims, then go out of business the next day and leave the end consumers with a ceiling-full of failed experiments. To that end, I'd say the level of quality that Beacon etc sell would be reasonable and on par with the cheaper stuff that you'd get from an electrical wholesaler - the only significant difference being that your builder or sparky could probably buy them for $20 and sell them to you for $25, instead of you buying them from a retailer for $50, and you contributing to the funding of the next series of The Block... Anyway, My main point was just that if you're willing to dig a bit deeper than one of the common retailers, I guarantee you will be able to find genuinely equivalent stuff at lower prices, or much higher quality stuff for similar prices, from places that have low overheads and without the "Josh and Jenna" marketing gumpf. Think of it as being able to buy a legit BMW for the price of a Hyundai, just by ditching the nice showroom and driving a bit further out to a tin shed showroom in an industrial estate... I'm not sure what impression you got from my post, but I was certainly not trying to imply that you were clueless. Maybe it's just my dry sense of humour that's not well conveyed via text. I get that sometimes. I spend my life around lighting and am just trying to help pass on some knowledge to others that ask for assistance. It can be a very complicated area, and is only becoming more so. Usually my lighting design advice is $220/hr. Some would say that's too much. Here, it's free. How's that for value! Building Services Engineer Renovating our 1960's modernist home in Brisbane https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=82091 Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 19Mar 31, 2015 10:14 pm Back to the main topic - colour temperature doesn't necessarily affect illuminance. It is true that higher colour temperature light sources do generally have marginally higher efficacy (lumen output per watt of electricity consumed), however it is now pretty close, within around 5% usually. For example, a typical 13w LED downlight in 3000k might put out 720 lumens whereas the 6000k version might put out 750 lumens. Pretty much undetectable by human eyes. There is a perception that cool white is brighter, but this is only because it does not accurately reproduce colours and makes them appear lighter than they actually are. Hence why art galleries, high end retailers etc all use high CRI 3000k light sources. So for those reasons I prefer 3000k for residential and circulation spaces, and 4000k for offices, schools, industrial etc. I basically never use 5000k or 6500k. But as has been said, there is no right or wrong, it's your home.. Re: Warm lights vs cool lights 20Apr 01, 2015 7:16 am It's all good, I really do appreciate the (free!) advice I just felt like your post came off a little condescending, and that it could have been worded better, that's all. Unfortunately, my builder doesn't offer an option to get lights through them. We have to supply our own. Thanks for the extra info on the colour temperature stuff. I'll bear all that in mind. I guess my worry is that the warm will kind of clash with my cool colour scheme, but that the cool will make it feel more institutional, and that's going to be impossible to really judge until it's done. Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 So I'm just reading up on this ecosystem of lights. I'm planning on putting deck lights along the outside edge of a large deck. Will need about 3 packs (18 lights) plus… 0 23012 |