Bathroom Lighting Zones And Ingress Protection Ratings Explained

The bathroom is an area of your home that naturally comes with higher lighting requirements than the rest of your house. The nature of LED bathroom lights however makes it very easy for manufacturers to create lights suitable for all of the bathroom lighting zones.

Bathroom Zones

I mentioned above the term bathroom lighting zones which is a concept that not everyone may be aware of. Due to the wet nature of bathrooms they are for safety reasons divided into various bathroom zones, with each lighting zone covering a specific area of your bathroom having a specific characteristic.

For instance. Bathroom zone 0 is essentially the area inside the bathtub or shower, the wettest and least suitable part for electrical applications. Following that is the bathroom zone 1 which is the area above the bathtub or shower up to a height of 2.25 meter, and bathroom zone 2 which covers the area stretching to 0.6 meter outside the bathtub or shower, as well as the area above the bathtub and shower if over 2.25 m. Everything outside of this is referred to bathroom zone 3 which normally is not subject to any regulations.

The safety regulations for all of these bathroom lighting zones and the requirements for your LED bathroom lighting in all of these zones can be found in your national safety regulations for bathroom lighting.

Ingress Protection Ratings

Also worth knowing when browsing for LED bathroom lights is that there is an international classification system for the sealing effectiveness of electrical equipment against intrusion of moisture and foreign bodies. The ratings is expressed with the characters “IP” followed by 2 digits.

The First Digit

The first digit signifies to what degree the equipment is protected against intrusion from foreign bodies and is graded as follows:

0. No special protection
1. Protection against solid objects greater than 50mm in diameter. (hands etc)
2. Protection against objects not greater than 80mm in length and 12mm in diameter. (fingers etc)
3. Protection against entry by tools with a thickness greater than 1.0 mm in diameter.
4. Protection against entry by objects with having a thicknes or diameter greater than 1.0mm.
5. Dust safe to the level to ensure interference with normal operation.
6. Completely dust proof.

The Second Digit

The second digit in the classification system signifies to what degree the equipment is protected from moisture and is graded as follows:

0. No special protection
1. Protection against dripping water.
2. Protection against vertically dripping water.
3. Protection against sprayed water.
4. Protection against splashed water.
5. Protection against water from a nozzle.
6. Protection against heavy seas, or powerful jets of water.
7. Protection against submersion.
8. Protection against continuous submersion.

The Optional Third Digit

There is actually a third optional digit in the classification system that indicates to what degree the product is protected against impact. The grading is as follows:

0. No special protection
1. Protection against 0.225J impact (similar to a 150 g weight dropping from 15cm.)
2. Protection against 0.375J impact (similiar to a 250 g weight dropping from 15cm.)
3. Protection against 0.5J impact (similiar to a 250g weight dropping from 20cm. )
4. Protection against 2.0J impact (similiar to a 500g weight dropping from 40cm. )
5. Protection against 6.0J impact (similiar to a 0.61183kg weight dropping from 1m.)
6. Protection against 20.0J impact (similiar to a 2.0394kg weight dropping from 1m. )

Careful Selection Is The Key

If there is one thing that you should keep in mind when you are buying you LED bathroom lights, it should be to first analyze your lighting needs. Make a mental note or write down on a piece of paper in which bathroom lighting zones you will place your lights and what minimum IP ratings will be necessary to protect your newly purchased lights from interference from foreign bodies.