Phase One (of five)

Lights

Rayleen and I spent a lot of time on the lighting. It seemed simple enough but the more I read on H1 the more I became confused and then I spoke to some of the sales assistants at the lighting shops and that just made things worse. But we had to have some sort of lights and Rayleen nixed my idea of Maglite torches hung from the ceiling in each room, so we gritted our teeth and went for it ...

 For the living areas we wanted downlights, but wanted simple downlights and to step back from the trend we noticed in display homes of the downlights being a 'feature' in their own right, they also had to be energy efficient. We ended up purchasing around 40 Espar GU10 13w compact fluoro globes and the same number of downlight cages in white (I think that is what they are called) and had them installed in the living areas, passage ways, kitchen, ensuite and main bedroom. Apparently there is a formula I was meant to use to determine exactly how many lights I would need for each room, but to be honest I just estimated (okay guessed) how many I thought would be needed.

 The effect we were after was one of the lights being mostly unnoticed, unless you were looking for them, oh, and if they were turned on, obviously :)


And this is a sample of what it looks like:

Not saying we wanted all the lights to be 'feature-less', we went with these pendant lights for over the kitchen bench.

There is another pendant light in the entry, but it hasn't been fully assembled yet and just looks sad. So I wasn't allowed to take a picture of it.


Obviously for the man-cave (Home Theatre) something as understated as that just wouldn't cut the mustard. For this room I went recessed halogens - the energy saving aspect of this room wasn't an issue as the lights should be turned off most of the time I am in it. I coupled these to a push button dimmer - no real reason, just thought it would be 'cool' is all. :)


This awkward looking pic is the HT room, the projector is going between the two single pot lights at the back of the room.

Keeping to the 'man' theme for the moment, this is where I will be keeping all my data and networking gear. It may look like the top shelf of Rayleen's linen cupboard now, but soon it will be home to my movie and mp3 collections. The little box to the right is a thermostat, it's connected to the exhaust fan. When the temperature goes above the temp set on the thermostat, the exhaust fan kicks in until it cools down. Just trying to stop everything from overheating.

For the ensuite we wanted a little mood lighting, looks very effective in the display homes we had visited.


We thought that those little star lights would look nice and give the ensuite just the right atmosphere. We had twelve installed, three in the bulkhead on one switch and nine above the bath on a second switch.

 Over the vanity basins:

And over the bath:

They certainly do set the mood .. that is if being struck in the eyes with laser light is the mood you are after! They would have to be the brightest little suckers. We will have to get dimmers installed on these later ... hey, push button dimmers would be cool!

This is the al fresco, these lights are also compact fluoros, but they are dust and waterproof. Probably never going to need that feature, but better safe than sorry, and it's all about 'peace of mind'.

For the lights either side of the garage entry, we went with these:

That's about it for the lights. We did have guards installed around all the lights, some electricians will say that it's not needed, but, again, it's a 'peace of mind' thing. If any of you are buying lights at the moment, I can recommend a little store south of the river, which should be able to give you a good deal.

Hope I haven't bored you all ... air con installed Tuesday :)

PS Rather proud of myself .. my guess on the number of lights for each room was spot on - the lighting works fine at night.

Lighting

Lights .. I have to admit that trying to get the lighting right has been one of the bigger headaches of the build so far. We want to use energy efficient globes (i.e. compact fluoro) not just for the environment but also for the sake of our bank balance as electricity tariffs here in the west are set to rise significantly over the next two years. We have decided that we will use the lighting from the display home as a guide but where SPH have used halogen downlights, we will install a compact fluoro downlight. So as part of our electrics plan discussed at pre-start, we had the batten fixings removed from the living / family rooms, study, Bedroom 1, ensuite and Home Theatre rooms and replaced with a junction box placed in the ceiling.

For the other rooms I am going to fit a DIY batten fixture and a CFL globe.

In what we thought was a step away from the 'mainstream' (but which we now find is common in some of the more recently built display homes) we have decided to use downlights with white surrounds instead of the brushed chrome that seems popular. The reason being is that they are, after all, just lights and not everything in a room has to be a 'feature'. So, the downlights will look like this;

For the al fresco and portico, we are using Fozz 'Opera' because of it's water and dustproof capabilities.

The one bit of lighting bling in the family / kitchen / dining area will be three pendant lights over the island bench.

It's not all CFL though, for the Home Theatre we are usig halogens, (I am having a HPM SuperDimmer as the switch and it only works with halogen lights) but am also trying to go for a cinema feel for the room and are using these;

With the exception of a ceiling fan for the al fresco area and one for the Main Bedroom, that's about it.