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Light is all around us but we cannot touch or feel it, and yet it
is responsible for all that we see; without light we perceive nothing.
Good lighting stems from an understanding of the balance between light
and shade. In simple terms, lighting is the presentation of space.
If used skillfully, it provides the final invisible touches to your
design. Artificial light thrown onto the surfaces of a room from different
heights and angles will change its apparent dimensions. It can emphasize
height, structure and materials, and become almost an architectural
element itself.
 Lighting
will set the mood whether your interior is traditional or contemporary.
But good lighting should not really be noticed: it should enhance
your interiors and provide a wonderfully creative environment without
obviously doing so.
Lighting has endless varieties of sources. The main sources used
within the home are tungsten filament, tungsten halogen, both mains-
and low-voltage, and compact fluorescent. Others, such as discharge
sources, metal halide and sodium, have a delayed start up and are
not easy to dim. For this reason they are used mainly in commercial
situations, although they are sometimes useful in gardens to light
up large trees and to provide the light source for fibre-optics.
Lighting Tungsten filament (or incandescent)
This is the standard bulb in most table lamps we use and is available
in a variety of shapes and sizes. Electricity passes along the tungsten
filament, heating it so that a mixture of light and heat is produced.
The resulting light is warm and inviting, which is effective in
the evening, but can look unnatural and insipid during the day.
For best results, this type of light source should be combined with
others so that a different balance is achieved between light levels
for daytime and evening.
Tungsten halogen
This bulb contains a tungsten filament as before, but is surrounded
by a halogen gas. The halogen combines with the tungsten to provide
a far whiter and brighter light than the equivalent tungsten. It
is often used for uplighting. The tungsten halogen linear fixtures
(200-300 watts), whether wall-mounted or free-standing, can be the
perfect solution to the general light for a room with an ornate
or sloped ceiling or unusual shape. The conventional tungsten halogen
lamps work very well as uplights, giving a white light and, with
their high wattage, a correspondingly high level of illumination.
Low voltage tungsten halogen
Low voltage means that a bulb fitting operates at 12 volts (v) rather
than the usual 240v. The advantage of 12v is that the filament in
the lamp can be manufactured much smaller, which results in a more
discreet light source, which can still control the light efficiently.
The spread of light is determined by the position of the filament
within the reflector; if the filament is in the wrong place, dark
spots can appear in the light beam. Low-voltage bulbs particularly
lend themselves to feature lighting: they enable very precise control
and provide an attractive white light because of their halogen gas.
To reduce the voltage from 240v to 12v a transformer is required.
If an electronic transformer is used with downlights, it can usually
fit through the aperture of the fitting and rest in the ceiling
alongside the fitting. If maintenance is required, the transformer
can be pulled out of the ceiling through the hole of the fixture
itself. |
