Changing from pendant to downlights

[Dave D]

A while ago I was looking into changing an ordinary pendant light to several downlights in several rooms, maybe even every room in the house. From what I could tell it wasn't straight forward as there was a chance of a problems. I think it was overload?
Recently while speaking to an electrician he seemed to say its not a problem anymore as you wil be using LED lights.
Have I understood that correctly?

 

[EFLImpudence]

Probably.

You can have 460 3W lights on a normal UK light circuit (with nothing else on the circuit).

 

[winston1]

Probably.

You can have 460 3W lights on a normal UK light circuit (with nothing else on the circuit).

Hm, you are assuming unity power factor I guess. Probably not the case especially with capacitor droppers. Without knowing the figures I would guess about 100 3W lights.

 

[Mottie]

We used to have 8 x 50w downlights in our kitchen on the one switch. Got Led's now.

 

[pedr0]

If you do go down the downlight route, I highly recommend placing them above furniture and close to walls/cabinets/curtains as opposed to over the areas you walk. This seemed a bit counter intuitive to me at first. And I was used to seeing downlights arranged as a regular grid on ceilings which seemed to make sense because I thought you wanted an even spread of light.

But actually, if you place them closeish (400-600mm, say) to walls, kitchen units and curtains, it bounces the light off the walls and into the room. This gives more of an even light than if you place it above the places where you walk, in which case you'll kinda end up with pools of light down the well-lit walk way, but dimmer outside that walk way. Furthermore, one of the problems with pendant lights is the gloom around the edges of the room at the top of the wall, making it feel like the room is closing in around you. By placing the downlights close to walls, the light is brought right up to the top of the walls making it feel much more open.

Of course, it would be equally weird to just have lights around the edges of a large room, so the final trick is to put lights over furniture like sofas, beds, coffee tables, dining tables (which will pick them out as features), directly above toilets (one less excuse for missing) and then of course directed over workplaces (above the kitchen sink, over the kitchen worktop etc) making sure not to put it slightly behind you so as not to cast your own shadow over the work place.

If you want to go down a rabbit hole of lighting placement, you can start by looking at John Cullen website for ideas. If you look at enough pictures there, you'll start to see the repeating themes.

 

[Dave D]

Thanks everyone. Even 100 lights per circuit is loads I would think.
That website looks good particularly the outoor stuff.

 

[ericmark]

The problem with LED down lights is the area emitting the light, @pedr0 makes a good point, with light reflecting off walls, height also makes a difference, personally I liked the old fluorescent tube do to spread of light, produced very few shadows, but son likes the look of the MR16 lamp, so he replaced the 22 watt LED replacement for the 64 watt fluorescent tube (5 foot now 58 watt) with GU10 230 volt MR16 lamps. for half of the kitchen, think around 3 watt each, and around 16 of them, so 48 watt instead of 22 watt, and he says it is better, well at double power I should hope so, but the tube gave out 2200 lumen according to the spec, and a 3 watt LED GU10 around 250 lumen so 4000 lumen total, the original fluorescent was over 5000 lumen.

And clearly from bike on the wall the ceiling is high, it was son having a go at his wife for not using the expensive bike, he said it was treated like an ornament so may as well display it like an ornament, my wife is the same, never rides her bike was over £1500 but I am not putting hers on wall, not good enough ducking, and as an e-bike rather heavy, 22 kg on wall going a bit OTT, mine 25 kg I think but heaver as folds.

I joke with my son if doing a planetarium he could have at least arranged the lights in the form of the great bear?