The Bright Lights of Modernity

Currently, the lights in the apartment, (all but the bathroom light) seem to be original. They are brass and frosted glass, stuck to the ceilings like the first wave of oyster lights. They are not retro chic, vintage cool or period charm, so they must go.

We started the light journey into looking at LED down lights. After all, we were fitting a new ceiling, so we could take advantage of making life easy and installing them at the same time, before the plasterboard got in the way. After researching into it, mainly on blogs, the process it seemed would have been expensive, fiddly, risky and less effective than you may think. LED's are a fairly new type of globe, especially to the residential market. Each globe uses a very small amount of wattage to produce a massive amount of light. LED's can start and range up to 3,4,5 watts, the equivalent of a regular halogen down-light uses around 40-50 watts each. PLUS an LED globe lifespan can last for many years. (I've read up to 50,000 hours. That's about 6 years if you left it on 24 hours a day!!!)
Now here's the "BUT" and indeed it is an important one because we wont be installing LED down lights because of the buts. Each LED down light can cost around $80-$100, omitting 9 watts of power with a 3x3 watt globe. The light is very directional and lights up with a narrow beam rather than as a sheet of light. The light can also look quite blue, the newer "warm light" ones looked VERY yellow and artificial. Installing energy saving globes (that's the common spiral ones that were all used to now) into regular down light fittings were another option, however many people found that they took a long time to warm up as the globes are so small. A forum speaker said it took 30-60 seconds to light up, depending on how cold of a day it was.
As for regular down lights, by law you need to have a gap in your roof of 100mm (so we would have had to lower the ceiling by more than we wanted) because of potential fire hazards. There was no way I was installing hot little burning embers in the ceiling. (Plus they output waaay to much energy which was the reason behind the LED saga in the first place.


Here is our solution:
For the bedroom, we purchased this lovely bit of bling. They were selling this in the shop for around $500. I bought the very same from a guy in Waterloo who was selling it on Ebay for $200 (I got him down to $150 though!). He bought it back from Hong Kong but couldn't install it because it was too heavy. Its VERY heavy actually, though made out of acrylic. Our ceilings being concrete will be able to withstand the weight.



Something similar to this was purchased from Luminous Lifestyle. These spot lights are a new addition and will sit next to the shelves, lighting up the dullest corner of our apartment.



Similar to this Louis Poulsen "Satelitte" light, a timeless design from the 50's, we purchased two lights to sit as spotlights over the prep area once we install our new kitchen.



I found this image online as inspiration for two drum lights to go in both the lounge and dining area. Most pendant lights I have found only have one globe with a maximum wattage of 100, (That's 20 watts with energy saving globes.) and I'm not sure if its going to be bright enough. Need to test this out and then go shopping so were ready for the electrician. Hes coming this Tuesday to start work.