Integrated lighting housing units or GU10s

[Mr_T25]

You mention GU10 lamps. Do you mean you are installing spotlights or downlighters? Is it for a kitchen?

This will be for spot lights. We will have other lighting including pendant lighting and wall lighting, so multiple sources of light but for the spotlights, just thinking of the best type to go for.

As I mention, I think I wont opt for the integrated ones.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

What small spots or specific architectural features do you want to illuminate?

 

[Echo the husky]

Not sure which brands do, but they do make surface mount kits for 600x600 modulars

The JCC version is here.

 

[JohnW2]

What small spots or specific architectural features do you want to illuminate?

If that happens to be what the OP actually wants to do, he should be careful to look for very narrow beam-angle ones - if he uses wide-angle ones, he'll probably end up lighting most of the room!

Kind Regards, John

 

[bhm1712]

If you could find a way to mount them in a plasterboard ceiling I could see this type of lighting working in a kitchen.

http://luxreview.com/review/2015/06/600-x-600mm-led-ceiling-panels

We have this type of LED lighting in the office: light output is Great. Only issue is the drivers supplied with them only last about 12 months tops.

 

[Mr_T25]

What small spots or specific architectural features do you want to illuminate?

I notice from a few of the other posts you have made on lighting questions, you seem to be anti- spot lights, though I do understand to an extent why, as you probably get more light from a regular style pendant light or uplights from a wall. But in places like loft extensions, with ceiling heights of 2.2m or dare I say even 2m, any other light type is just not practical. What is your beef with spot lights for regular use, rather than just for lighting up architectural features? There seems to be a lot of people using this as their primary source of light.

 

[bhm1712]

What small spots or specific architectural features do you want to illuminate?

I notice from a few of the other posts you have made on lighting questions, you seem to be anti- spot lights, though I do understand to an extent why, as you probably get more light from a regular style pendant light or uplights from a wall. But in places like loft extensions, with ceiling heights of 2.2m or dare I say even 2m, any other light type is just not practical. What is your beef with spot lights for regular use, rather than just for lighting up architectural features? There seems to be a lot of people using this as their primary source of light.

I know this wasn't directed at me but....I'm of the same opinion. The clue is in the name of them - Spot Light. They were never designed nor intended for providing lighting for entire rooms and hence why to get the desired lighting level in a room fitted with spots you need about 10+ fittings. Having regular lighting in loft conversions is no more of an issue than fitting spots unless you are fitting pendant lamps.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

What is your beef with spot lights for regular use, rather than just for lighting up architectural features?

Basically what bhm said - they aren't designed to do that, so they don't do it well. In fact, they are actually designed to not do it.

There seems to be a lot of people using this as their primary source of light.

Indeed. A lot of the blame for that lies with the sheds. Ever heard the saying "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? If you go into a shed and discount all of the lights which are not tacky tasteless trash, pretty much all you're left with are the little downlighters.

 

[JohnW2]

I know this wasn't directed at me but....I'm of the same opinion. The clue is in the name of them - Spot Light. They were never designed nor intended for providing lighting for entire rooms and hence why to get the desired lighting level in a room fitted with spots you need about 10+ fittings.

I also agree totally, in terms of spotlights - but what BAS does not seem to recognise is that, unlike the situation in the earliest days, by no means all downlighters are spotlights. If one really wants a spotlight, to illuminate some specific item or feature, then one should use a narrow-angle lamp - with a beam angle of 30° at most, less if possible.

However, lamps (including GU10 LEDs) are readily available with beam angles of 60°, 90° or even 120° - and they most certainly aren't 'spotlights'. A 90° lamp in a ceiling at 2.5m will illuminate roughly a 3.2m diameter area at worktop level (~0.9m from floor) and a 120° one will illuminate an area roughly 5.5m in diameter at worktop height; such lights are more correctly termed 'floodlights', since they certainly aren't spotlights! Whilst there will undoubtedly be some fall-off of illumination towards the edge of the illuminated area, they certainly cannot be likened to 'torches'!

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

What you don't seem to recognise is that the format is fundamentally unsuited for, and actively designed to be unsuited for, general room illumination.

Find me an example which works well for general room illumination when not used in numbers.

All the tweaking of beam angles ("some fall-off", yeah, right) is like polishing a 2" diameter t**d.

 

[JohnW2]

What you don't seem to recognise is that the format is fundamentally unsuited for, and actively designed to be unsuited for, general room illumination.

You're still thinking and talking about spotlights, not floodlights.

All the tweaking of beam angles ("some fall-off", yeah, right) is like polishing a 2" diameter t**d.

The physical size of the source is irrelevant, it's the dispersion which matters. I can produce quite usable illumination of my garden of about 0.35 acre with a floodlight which measures only 5-6 inches across, about 30 feet off the ground - that's far smaller, pro rata, than a 2" lamp on the ceiling of a room.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

I would like to disagree with John, however I have to admit he is right. They are more flood lights than spot lights and things have moved on. But still believe there is an area v light output formula and if you don't have the area then does not matter how much output it does not help.

Take a 5 foot long LED strip and compare with the same strip inside a translucence tube and you will find the tube gives a better light. One would at first think having a tube over the LED's would reduce the light, but because it helps spread the light it works better.

I have looked at LED GU10 lamps. 16 times 1/8 of an inch is not much area, but the led uses 2/3 of that area for cooling so the real lamp is half the area of the MR16 it replaced. There is a good reason why most lamps have a opaque diffuser of some type. Area matters. Yes I use MR16 replacements for my bedroom reading lamps. They work really well. But the kitchen has one fluorescent and one LED tube, and the other two rooms LED candle bulbs, above stairs a 18W fluorescent emergency fitting HF type, and bedrooms have in the main LED bulbs with one or two of the old CFU plus a 2D above one bed that is a bit of over kill 18W is far too bright. Point being there is a place for every type of light.

 

[ericmark]

The physical size of the source is irrelevant, it's the dispersion which matters. I can produce quite usable illumination of my garden of about 0.35 acre with a floodlight which measures only 5-6 inches across, about 30 feet off the ground - that's far smaller, pro rata, than a 2" lamp on the ceiling of a room.

Kind Regards, John

I also have a small lamp a R7s 5W lamp in a standard 120W halogen fitting lighting up my drive, but this hardly compares with the 10 x 3W LED candle bulbs lighting up my living room.

 

[JohnW2]

I also have a small lamp a R7s 5W lamp in a standard 120W halogen fitting lighting up my drive, but this hardly compares with the 10 x 3W LED candle bulbs lighting up my living room.

I was talking about the degree of dispersion of the light, not its brightness. BAS seems to think that unless the light source is large, it can only produce 'a small circle of light'.

I would refer the doubters to the large area of illumination which can be produced by a ≤1mm fibre-optic light source in an endoscope.

Kind Regards, John

 

[333rocky333]

I worked at an architects house once, he had gone mental because someone fitted wide beam lamps, when he had designed his metre wide corridor to take extra narrow beam lamps, to create circles on the floor and arches on the walls, it did look cool when the right lamps were fitted and that was the original intention of the spotlights. you only really used spotlights, wallwashers, spaced around to highlight pictures,etc and most were originally tilt or eyeballs for that use.

Originally with halogen, there was about 10 beam angles, then only 3, then suddenly narrow beam lamps virtually dissapeared, wide beam became the norm and suddenly they were called downlights, one big manufacturer brags in there ads how you can save time and money by fitting less lights than there competitors for the same amount of light, due to the wide beam they claim to give out