Kitchen Lighting Advice Please?

kazzayu

Hi

I'm changing my kitchen lighting from a fleurescent strip light 40w which is sufficient for my needs.

I have a bar of directional spotlights (90cm length) but am worried there won't be enough light. I have bought a bar with 4 x maxiumum 40w so will equate to 160w overall. I am trying to find out if this will be anything near the light the strip light gives off now, or should I go for something lengthier and with more bulbs of higher wattage?

The kitchen measures 2 x 4 metres.

I would really appreciate your opinions! Thank you

DVardysShadow

The advantage of a strip light is that it is not a point source of light, so it creates less shadow. When it comes to working out how much light you get, you need the light output in lumens, not the wattage of the lamps

kazzayu

Hi

Thanks for that. Having looked into lumen output I have gathered that a 40w fleurescent tube will give off around 3000, and each 40w halogen spotlight around 330 (x 4 = 1320 lumens).

Does this sound about right, and from this I gather the lighting to be about half that of the fleorescent tube? Therefore I had better get a bar with x 6 spots with higher wattage.

Any more thoughts or opinions?

baldelectrician

Change the flourescant light to a twin flourescant (same size) or a longer single fitting.

If you want something that looks better try a 4 or 6 spot light (low voltage - 12V) with transformer. The 12V lamps are more efficient and give a better light output

DVardysShadow

kazzayu wrote: »

Hi

Thanks for that. Having looked into lumen output I have gathered that a 40w fleurescent tube will give off around 3000, and each 40w halogen spotlight around 330 (x 4 = 1320 lumens)....

Any more thoughts or opinions?

So you need 360W of Halogen spotlight to give the same light as a 40W fluorescent. Not efficient.

AdrianW2

I suspect you're being a bit overoptimistic for the tube and pessimistic about the halogens...

...but I've seen people replace tubes with halogens before (and I've got a second hand 4-spot halogen fitting as a result). My old landlord tried 2 4-spot fittings and that worked fairly well, but then you have so many lamps that one is always blown or not working for some other reason.

In theory you can get closer with a set of 4 11W CFL lamps in GU10 fittings but you still end up with dark spots.

totalsolutions

I've 5 x 30w under unit floro lights, 4x150w ceiling lamps and 2x 60w extractor lamps, that works well. Don't remove the flouro's very good light source.