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.

Under Cabinet Lighting

Under cabinet lighting is a common type of LED kitchen lighting today. Their primary role is to provide you with task lighting so that you are able to perform your everyday kitchen duties such as preparing your food. For this purpose they must provide a high light output, which can be a good idea to keep in mind if you want lighting that are both practical and visually attractive.

Under cabinet lighting comes in many forms. There are round lights, rectangular lights, and triangular lights, directly mounted or mounted on tracks, normal-sized or extra slim. It’s a good idea to browse around little first to get a better overview of your many possibilities here.

Drawer Lighting

Drawer lighting is yet another form of task lighting that can make your life easier for you while working in the kitchen. It can be used to illuminate your cutlery drawers, pan drawers, or any other drawer where some extra light would be much appreciated.

Over Cabinet lighting

As the name suggests, this form of kitchen LED lighting is placed on top of your cabinets and can be used to illuminate your cabinet doors. They usually come with adjustable heads so that you will be able to direct the light as it pleases you.

In Cabinet Lighting

People often speak of 2 different classifications for this type of LED kitchen lighting. First there is those having integrated sensors so that when the cabinet door is opened or closed the light will switch on or off. The other type lacks these sensors and are often used to illuminate the interior of a glass cabinet.

In cabinet lighting comes in forms of so called puck lights, in rectangular forms with varying number of lights, and also as units which can be rotated and tilted. It’s recommended that you use warm white for traditional kitchens and cool white for more modern frosted units.

Recessed Cabinet Lighting

With this type of LED kitchen lights you are able to hide away the biggest part of the lights into the surface they are being mounted on, which can create a very neat look and style. These lights can be used as recessed cabinet lights, recessed under cabinet lights, or as flyover lights.

LED Strip Lighting

This type of LED kitchen lights is very versatile since the flexibleness of LED strips makes it possible to install them in countless of locations. Add a wide variety of colors into the mix and your possibilities are nearly endless. You can use them as task lighting, mood lighting, or to simply add stunning effects in various locations. They can be cut to desired length and some of them even comes with a remote control.

Plinth Lighting

Yet another way to add style to your kitchen with LED kitchen lighting is to make use of plinth lighting. These lights have the ability to add depth to a room and create a pleasant atmosphere. This can be accomplished using flexible LED strips along the plinth to create a continuous line of light, or by using round or square plinth lights to create spot effects.

What Are Floodlights?

For those of you who don’t know what flood lights are, they are simple lights that are designed to emit a broad beam providing an even illumination across a wide area. They are often used at stadiums to illuminate the playing field in sport events, but can also be found in theater stages and other places.

Benefits Of LED

The benefits of using LED flood lighting over the alternatives is fairly straightforward. The led technology ensures that these lights provides a lot of light per watt, thus becoming very energy efficient. With the low energy consumption you will also get very low operating temperatures.

Besides that they also come with very long service times, often up to 35 times longer than halogen bulbs. The lights doesn’t contain any environmentally hazardous materials and the beams are free from harmful UV or IR emission.

Applications

LED flood lights can be used to illuminate practically every kind of landscape or indoor area. They are successfully being used to illuminate fountains, waterfalls, rockeries, bridges, sport events, factories, gyms and also as cast lighting. Wherever you need flood lighting you can utilize these types of lights with great results.

Styles

LED flood lights arrive in many forms. You can find them as regular light bulbs suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, which really is a convenient way for fresh installment of flood lighting. Another replacement type besides bulbs is LED tubes, available to replace those flickering fluorescent tubes. There are also standalone fixtures in many styles and forms ready to be mounted for every application.

If you are choosing LED flood light fixtures you will have a couple of different aspects to consider. First and foremost you must make sure that the form of the fixture will fit the place where it’s supposed to be mounted, both physically and aesthetically.

They also come with varying light angles and power efficiencies, where at least the former could have a significant impact on the end results.

Colors

With LED flood lights you are not only limited to the usual color white. You can also find models available in several different single colors or you can go for a model featuring multiple colors that can be changed through special control systems. This makes it very easy for you to get the very same professional look and feel in your home garden as can be found in public places being illuminated by colorful flood lighting.

LED flood lights provide home owners and business owners alike an easy way to illuminate their property the very same way as professionals do and receive the same stunning look and feel of the areas being illuminated as can be found on famous public places.

Terminology

It can easily get a little confusing with all the different names all referring to essentially the same thing. Besides the commonly used term LED downlights, they are also referred to as LED recessed lighting, as well as LED can lights and LED pot lights in American and Canadian English respectively. These type of lights are, like the name suggests, concentrating the light in a downward direction.

Type Of Mounting

These type of lights consists of 2 parts, the trim and the housing, which are to be installed into a hollow opening in the ceiling. The trim is the visible part of the LED downlight which is seen when looking up into the fixture, whereas the housing is the part containing the lamp holder itself.

The housings vary in sizes with the most commonly used sizes being 4, 5, and 6 inches in diameter. For this reason you will have to make note of measurements of your housings before you head out to buy your LED downlights. It may also be a good idea to write down the depth of your housings as well, seeing that the lights that are available will vary in this dimension as well.

Choosing Your Dimension

Which dimension to choose depends heavily on the application and aesthetic preference. While smaller dimensions are less conspicuous and often more appealing, broader trims have the potential to provide broader amounts of light.

Generally speaking, the 6 inch trims are still being viewed as the main choice for residential LED downlights due to them supporting a broad range of lamps and wattages. The popularity of 5 inch trims, and to some extent 4 inch trims, seems to revolve around task lighting, while 4 inch trims
is heavily used as accent lighting.

6 Types Of Trims

The trim being the visible part of your LED downlight, it will be the trim that decides the look and feel of your LED recessed lighting. Therefore it is important that you understand what type of trim you want.

Adjustable Trim

As the name suggests, adjustable trims enable you to change the direction of the light emitted. This can come in handy in certain situations where you want to control the light flow, or when the housing is being installed on angled surfaces.

Baffle Trim

Being the most popular choice for LED recessed lighting, these trims typically come in black or white. They are designed with large grooves to absorb excess light and baffles to reduce glare, with the black ones being the most effective. The white baffles do however help with reducing the appearance of having dark holes in the ceiling.

Decorative Trim

Designed to combine visual appeal with efficient lighting, these types of trims have increased in popularity over the last few years, resulting in ever more varieties to choose from.

Lensed Trim

The preferred choice in bathrooms and other wet places, lensed trims protect the interior of the housing by keeping the moisture out.

Reflector Trim

These types of trims come with a highly polished surface designed to maximize the light being emitted. This makes the reflector trims useful in kitchens, commercial applications, and in any place having a high ceiling.

Wall Washed Trim

Wall wash trims directs all the light towards the wall using a directional reflector.

Whether you are looking to enhance the looks of your remodeled kitchen or need to illuminate the stone path in your garden, LED downlights will prove to be a viable option.

Many Choices

Researching LED garden lighting you will be amazed of the rich assortment available. There are LED garden lighting solutions available for virtually every purpose, in any shape, and in nearly as many colors. With so many choices at hand it’s only natural to become a little overwhelmed at first. You will find that by first categorizing your choices it will get much easier to plan your beautiful garden designs.

Spike Lights

Spike Lights are easy to install garden LED lights with a bottom shaped like a spike. This makes installation no harder than pressing firmly towards the ground. With so many shapes and forms available for purchase, they could make a nice addition to any garden.

In Ground / Deck Lights

The idea behind these LED garden lights is to greatly enhance the looks of your outdoor area with a minimalistic style. By sinking the fittings into a socket in the ground or in your deck, it’s relatively easy to create stunning designs that are hardly noticeable during the day, but become a spectacular nightscape in the evening.

Bollards / Post Lights

In the lighting industry a bollard is essentially a term for a short post-like light fixture. These LED garden lights are mainly being used to illuminate driveways, walkways and garden paths. Style and sizes varies greatly which can make them a great addition to any garden.

Underwater / Pond Lights

Adding underwater LED garden lighting to an existing pond or waterfall will bring more life to your water features at night. With the vast amount of styles and colors to choose from, your imagination will be the only thing standing between you and breathtaking creations.

Rope Lights

Even the simplest solutions can sometimes create stunning effects. LED garden lighting in form of LED ropes will make installation a breeze. Their flexibility enables them to easily be bent to form virtually any shape you can come up with. Should they be turn out to be too long you can with no trouble cut them to the required length. Rope lights come in a great array of colors and have estimated lifespans of up to 100 000 hours.

Solar Lights

Although solar lights can’t compete with low voltage LED garden lights in terms of output and effect, they could still prove to a be substantial addition to your outdoor area. What they lack in power they take back in flexibility. Being completely driven by solar energy they don’t require any wires being spread out throughout your garden.

Outdoor LED Benefits

There are some distinct advantages of choosing LED outdoor lighting over more traditional incandescent lighting sources for outdoor projects. First of all LED lights are much more energy efficient, and thus will produce more light per watt being consumed. If you have many lights on your property it will be highly noticeable on your electrical bill.

Another great benefit of LED outdoor lighting is the high durability. Since there is no filament and glass bulb they will last longer and be more shock and temperature proof. It’s not unusual for a LED to last up to 20 times longer than a regular incandescent light bulb.

It even gets better. When a LED has reached its stated lifetime it will still glow with a 70% intensity. No more will you have to deal with those abrupt light bulb failures, but instead the outdoor LED light will slowly start to dim away until complete failure. This will give you more time to replace old lights before they go completely black.

Garden Lights

In order to transform your garden into a spectacular nightscape you will need to invest into the right kind of lighting. Here is where the LED technology really shines. With expected lifespans of up to 50 000 hours, outdoor LED lights will practically be maintenance free.

Two types of outdoor LED lights that seem to be quite popular are the spike lights and deck lights. Being relatively easy to install they both add great visual enhancements with very little work required on your part.

The concept of a spike light is quite simple and makes for easy installation. They are basically regular outdoor LED lights with the bottom part being formed as a spike. Installing one of those in soft earth is just a matter of one firm push downwards.

Deck lights are recessed outdoor LED lights which you sink into the ground or any material where a socket can be made. The only part sticking up would be the actual top of the lamp, which can create very beautiful visual effects with proper planning.

House Lights

If you want to add some life to your house there are outdoor LED lighting for this purpose as well. Spot lights, up and down lights, and lanterns are just some of the options available for decorating your house walls. There are also recessed lights available for installation in walls and staircases, as well as ceiling lights to add ambience to your outdoor deck or entertaining area.

With so many LED outdoor lighting options available for enhancing the looks of your house and surrounding area, you will only be limited by your fantasy. By making use of the benefits that the LED technology offers you will effectively be spending less money and time on maintaining your beautiful outdoor area.