Lighting

How many ways can you do lighting?

How many ways are there to do lighting? The answer is too many! I’ll try to give you a couple of ideas in this article that should help you get going in the right direction. There are four main categories lighting falls into; ambient lighting, task lighting, decorative lighting and accent lighting.

In this article we are going to deal mostly with ambient lighting. Ambient lighting is what makes space usable, if done well it gives the room a nice volume of light without a lot of shadows. Thanks to LED lighting shadow reduction has improved in recessed cans which is a large source of light in modern homes. The lens on many modern LED fixtures come with a diffuser, which helps the light spread more evenly around a room. Without the diffuser the light would shine in a straight direction.

When choosing your LED lights there are two big areas to make sure you get right, one is how much light or lumens the fixture puts out the other is the color. Many people confuse lumens (light volume) with color. If you’ve ever seen a fluorescent light bulb that has be replaced with the wrong color bulb it sticks out. Check out this site www.Bulbcolors.com for a visual of the difference in light colors.

The actual amount of light a LED bulb puts out (lumens) is what you want to know for brightness of the bulb. A standard light bulb with 60watts puts out between 700 and 800 lumens. A 4’ fluorescent will put out between 1900 and 2500 lumens. Since LED is directional and the diffuser tries to break up the direction of the light as it leaves the fixture, LED light does seem brighter in general than incandescent lighting.

There is definitely an art to removing one type of lighting and replacing it with another. Many times in older homes one or two fluorescent fixtures would light a kitchen by themselves. When people update their kitchen they tend to take the plastic ceiling down and upgrade to recess cans. It is important to replace the lighting with the right amount of lumens while at the same time spreading the light as evenly as fluorescent lights do naturally.

At minimum for every one fluorescent bulb that gets removed you will need at least one 6” LED fixture just to make it functional. To get close to the same amount of light you would really need two 6” LED fixtures for every one 4’ fluorescent removed. The single biggest advantage I find with fluorescent light is how evenly it spreads light in a room so when replacing fluorescent evenly distributing LED lighting will be the biggest challenge.

After doing hundreds of kitchen lighting schemes we have developed a good understanding of the lighting you need in your kitchen. So feel free to give us a call to discuss any lighting scenario you may be looking into.

Call Batista Residential Electric 239-850-5007 so we can get your lighting right.