Kitchen Lights

Fluorescent lights fade with age. On top of that, they can get dirty in a kitchen. So if you compare an existing fluorescent light with a replacement LED you are often going to find that the LED is brighter than you might have expected.

Good to know, thanks Chris. Who on this Forum doesn’t like an upgrade :blush:

All subjective, of course. Not everybody likes things cleaner and brighter!

Here are pics re my post 9 hours ago:

Kitchen light close ups, the hob one is the most tilted.
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IMG_6304

Round panel only the depth of plasterboard in my hall
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Similar but surface mounted in son’s house
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Led lights have changed significantly in the last few years. Much brighter and more reliable.

I’d highly recommend going for LED lights with changeable bulbs. Electricians recommend against this, probably because it doesn’t need an electrician to replace the entire fitting.

While non replaceable LEDs are much cheaper and the lifespan of both is rated around 40,000hrs, that is not guaranteed. In experience with several homes, invariably one fitting will fail outside of the 12 month warranty well before 40k hrs and then not only do you need it replaced by an electrician, in our case we had several such failures where the same model number was no longer made. The option was to have a mismatched replacement or replace all of them for consistency.

After having that happen in the last three properties, we went for user replaceable bulb LEDs for every light in the new build home. Up front they are about 2-3 times more expensive, but it’s worth it… unless you like calling a sparky to change a sodding light :grin:

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Let those that forbid you, get up and do it themselves .

Seriously I wouldn’t worry about it. My view on electric items such as bulbs is forget about how fancy they are and concentrate on the simplicity of how easy it is to change the bulb :bulb:

Best wishes

Ian

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If you do go for downlighter, suggest you get an extra spare bulb. In my kitchen, we did have an early life failure of one bulb, but was able to match it. Often though, two similar looking bulbs can look different

I wouldn’t assume your electrician knows a lot about lighting. Our local electrician, who is a very good electrician, isn’t so hot when it comes to lighting. He installed lighting in my neighbors kitchen and it’s far to bright.

Asking what lux levels he’d recommend in the kitchen and the power factor of the lighting, will give a clue to his knowledge of lighting.

Depending on the size of the kitchen and the area of windows, you might want to go for lower Lux levels near the window, if the type of lighting you choose allows.

Or are competent and it is legal where you live to do yourself. But the question of future availability is a valid one. Certainly with some LEDS I have had failures in considerably less than claimed typical life. Interestingly failures have all been standard bulb-fit types, both ope fitting (BC or ES) and ceiling downlight spotlight fittings - latter at least I suspect due to a heat dissipation issue: LED lamps DO get warm, and whilst nowhere near as hot as tungsten lights, their heat tolerance is limited and will fail if they overheat. My kitchen and hall lights featured above have been in use for about 11-12 years now, with (touchwood!) no problems to date.

Why? I get it that if the room needs supplementary light during the day it is not needed as by the window, but doing that would give a dim area at night. Better might be to have two circuits separately switchable, an leave off the window area lights when it is bright outside. That said, I like a bright workspace - hence my choice of kitchen lights, if on during a dull day there is no obvious excessive brightness by the window.

In my previous house, where I didn’t have a dedicated radial, the LEDs in the ceiling occasionally made an easily audible hum come through the speakers.

In my kitchen, the sink is near the window. I personally don’t need a lot of light to wash the dishes. :blush:

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We clearly use kitchens differently and/or kitchen layouts are different! Whilst our sink is also by window, and pots and pans are washed in sink, it is in the middle of a workbench and we also do food prep beside and using it,

Having measured, LED lights have a very high electrical field similar to a microwave. But drops off sharply at about 50cm to near nothing.

Yes, I did not think that direct emissions from the lights were responsible.

Just some kind of earth loop or EM interference via the house main ring/circuit.

As an aside, but related, I recently replaced our smoke alarms. The instructions with the new ones - “do not site alarms closer than 50cm to any LED light bulb or fitting”.

Oh interesting. I wonder if it’s related or not. No idea.

Yes they have the cheapest possible transformers inside. But it’s rare for overhead lighting and mains outlets to be on the same circuit except maybe lamps.

There comes a point in this hobby where I think, sod it. i can’t worry about everything. And then just put music on.

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That could be down to the lighting power factor.

A power factor less than 1 will be polluting the electrics in your home. LEDs are less then 1, but he higher the better. From memory commercial buildings will have a minimum value of 0.95, I found some LED bulbs can be as low as 0.3.