Our perception of a room most often depends on its illumination. The right balance of light and shadow can make a room feel much more spacious, and with a limited amount of light, there is a chance to make a room look smaller than it actually is. Floor lighting is an excellent design opportunity to emphasize the originality and sophistication of the home interior. However, you need to know some subtleties, which we will discuss in our article. Every room in the house has its own characteristics. The living room and bedroom often have more space, as well as one or more windows. Therefore, to ensure equally good illumination in different rooms, it is necessary to take into account its size and the intensity of other light sources in it. Next, let's take a look at choosing the right type of backlight and immediately talk about some important features when choosing fixtures.
Rules for choosing fixtures for floor lighting
- Light sources used for illumination should be protected from moisture and dust as much as possible. Wet cleaning often carried out in residential areas can lead to improper operation of fixtures or even to a short circuit. For example, in the hallway, where floor lighting can also be installed, depending on the weather, dirty puddles may often appear flowing down from seasonal shoes. We also note that summer dust from shoes, although it does not cause great damage to installed lighting fixtures, can still adversely affect their operation.
- Requires impact-resistant housings containing light elements.
- Materials of fixtures must be non-combustible to ensure the required level of fire safety.
- Another important factor is the low power consumption of the installed lighting. Currently, LED strips and lamps are used for these purposes.
- Floor lighting should not dazzle when looking at it. Therefore, special diffusing lenses are used and a warm radiation spectrum is selected, close to natural sunlight.
Economic options
To achieve the greatest energy savings, dimmers and devices that turn on lights when someone is in the room are often installed. Such devices have a motion sensor that works by receiving infrared or sound waves from a moving person. There are also combined versions. Most of the devices have the ability to fine-tunesensitivity of sensors, which will give obvious advantages when using them. The main ones are:
- Automatically turn on the lighting when people are in the room. Carrying things and just walking around the house will become more enjoyable.
- No need to remember whether the light is off, because it turns itself off when there is no movement.
Light options
Let's talk about the types of lamps. The variety of the market for lighting devices in our time is extremely large. However, there are several types of fixtures that are used as the basis for floor lighting:
- spotlights;
- LED strips;
- neon lights;
- flexible neon;
- light floor;
- LED duralight.
Let's consider the features of each of the proposed options separately.
Spotlights
They are the most affordable and common type of floor lighting fixtures. Their main convenience is the possibility of embedding in special holes in the side walls, skirting boards, laminate or furniture. They are characterized by the following advantages:
- impact resistance;
- long service life;
- possibility to install different types of bulbs;
- decorative appearance;
- moisture resistance.
The latter quality is especially evident in this type of floor lighting, allowing you to install them in the kitchen and even in the bathroom.
Neon lights
They are another common way to arrange highlights. When working, they emit a soft and even light. Since the luminaire device in this case consists of the lamp itself with a reflector and wires, only a hidden installation option is needed. Most often, lighting with neon lamps is laid along the perimeter of a room or corridor. You can install the lamp in the wall to illuminate the floor. The advantages of using such lighting include:
- smoothness of the emitted light;
- wide choice of lighting color;
- long life.
There are also some disadvantages:
- high enough cost;
- high fragility of the lamps during installation, the need to prepare a special place for lighting.
LED strips
LED floor lighting has now become popular due to its low price and low power consumption. Therefore, such tapes are used as a material for illumination no less than spotlights. The device itself consists of a plastic tape with LEDs and a wire inside, a power supply and a controller that allows you to configure and adjust the backlight modes. A remote control is often attached to control the controller. In addition to the above, this floor lighting has the following advantages:
- no installation difficulties;
- long duty;
- availability of products with a wide range of colors;
- high flexibility in recessed floor lighting arrangement.
LED duralight
It is a transparent PVC tube with built-in LEDs at the same distance from each other. Such floor lighting is a worthy alternative to neon lamps or LED strips, at a slightly higher price. However, it also has its advantages:
- simplicity of laying and further inclusion in the power supply network through the plug;
- the presence of modifications with several rows of multi-colored LEDs in the tube, which gives a special originality to the interior.
Flexible neon
This built-in floor lighting is a hybrid between LED strip and neon lamp. Its basis, like that of duralight, is a PVC tube with LEDs inside. But the main difference between flexible neon is that the light is emitted smooth and diffused, like a neon lamp. Among the main advantages of its use are:
- gasket direction flexibility;
- high uptime (up to 100,000 hours).
Light floor
Such recessed floor lighting is most often found in the form of flooring elements with lighting inside. Although at home the light floor is used quite rarely, with the help of such modules a unique style is created.premises. Due to its functional use, the light floor has the following advantages:
- high impact resistance;
- good moisture resistance.
Mounting Features
Sale and installation services of spot lighting on the market are the most in demand in our time, so we will give information for its self-installation. Illumination from spot-type lamps is most often located in the corners or perimeter of the room. Such placement well emphasizes the contours of this room and successfully highlights all the objects located there, creating the most comfortable conditions for movement.
Main installation steps
Installation work on installing floor lighting (photo attached to the article) includes the following steps:
- The calculation of the amount of wiring and its laying occurs before the floor covering is installed: plywood, boards, laminate, chipboard, tiles or other elements.
- In a wooden covering, wires are placed between the lags. At the installation site of the fixtures, bends are made. They are calculated so that it is possible to bring the contacts out 10 or 15 cm outside the front side of the cover for easy connection of the ceiling.
- At the locations of the lamps, as they are installed, holes of the required diameter are cut for further placement of ceiling lamps with lamps in them.
- If the coating is ceramic tiles, then it is advisable to lay the wires before pouring the concrete screed, making bends for this. At the points of connection of lighting devices, installmetal or plastic landing capsules for shades, the ends of the wires are wound into them. After that, you can start pouring the concrete solution of the screed. It is necessary that the capsule assembly, together with the ceiling, protrude above the screed to the distance that is needed for laying the tiles. In this case, the front plane of the floor and the lamp will be on the same level. This technology eliminates the need for drilling holes in the concrete screed using a special cylindrical crown with diamond nozzles.
- Be sure to insulate all contact wire connections very tightly with heat shrink tubing or silicone. Heat shrink tubing is the most commonly used because it is extremely easy to work with and has the same insulating qualities as industrial insulating materials.
- After the wiring and laying the flooring, spotlights are connected to the ends of the outlets and fixed to the floor.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we add that each type of backlight has its own characteristics of the output maximum illumination and power consumption. Therefore, floor lighting in the hallway, bedroom or any other room should be selected based on size, light level and functionality. In addition, it is recommended to imagine in advance the final view of the room with the backlight turned on and choose the most harmonious color scheme
