How to determine lighting requirements for a room?

[RockyBalboa]

Room is 7m long x 3.9m wide with a sloped ceiling 4m sloping down to 3.3m. To complicate matters, there are two Velux sky lights.

[anonymous-user]

What is the room used for?

[RockyBalboa]

Dining room / lounge.

Would one large* light between the two sky lights be sufficient?

• Need to be able to determine how large/light output.

[Crumpet]

I'm as far from an expert as you can get but I can tell you from practical experience that it's better to have too much than too little and that it's best to have a variety of lighting. We've a room that's a similar size to that and with 10 GU10s is certainly bright enough. The problem is that it's not the type of light you want to sit under and relax so we've had to put table lamps everywhere (Philips Hue to control the GU10s individually). In hindsight I'd have put nice dimmable wall lights in as well for some softer lighting.

[hyphen]

Big no to 1 big light for a lounge and diner!! What you should be looking doe is lighting at 'different levels', so ceiling, wall, floor, table, strip lighting. And even outside the rear doors.

Is this a build in progress? Are you willing to spend a bit and fit led strips/downlights etc if so post a pic of the room so people(e36guy in particular) can suggest.

If not then just place a few table & floor lamps around, might be useful to get an electrician to wire so they come on together. And a pendant over the table/island.

Dimmers are good so you can adjust to suit.

Edited by hyphen on Monday 6th February 20:04

[Evolved]

If it's dark, you need more lights. HTH

[monoloco]

hyphen said:

Big no to 1 big light for a lounge and diner!! What you should be looking doe is lighting at 'different levels', so ceiling, wall, floor, table, strip lighting. And even outside the rear doors.

Is this a build in progress? Are you willing to spend a bit and fit led strips/downlights etc if so post a pic of the room so people(e36guy in particular) can suggest.

If not then just place a few table & floor lamps around, might be useful to get an electrician to wire so they come on together. And a pendant over the table/island.

Dimmers are good so you can adjust to suit.

Edited by hyphen on Monday 6th February 20:04

ditto this -one big light equals lots of hard and very dark shadows. Whatever you're doing in the room you can guarantee your back will be to the light so you'll be casting a shadow over what you are trying to do in front of you -awful!My advice : lots of lights high up (eg downlighters) plus dimmer switch so you can vary them depending on what you're doing and then a few odd lights around the room at lower level.

[Foliage]

circa 250 - 500 lux

for a 28m2 room your looking at about 7-14no 1000 lumen bulbs

I do the occasional lighting layout and it can be a bit finger in the air.