A lighting adventure in Sherborne

Third in our series of video diaries describing what happened when we moved our home and workplace to a converted coach-house on the edge of the beautiful town on Sherborne in Dorset.

Video 3

It's a little over two months since we started work on improving the lighting at The Coach House and wonders have been performed.  There's a hint of enthusiasm, though we know where that leads. But at last we can see what we're doing and that warrants a modest jig around the floor.

So what's happening?

The Kitchen and craftspace have seen the greatest improvement. We started with a 75W T12 fluorescent uplight, a 120W PAR38 spotlight and interior lights in the cooker hood (which were the most useful lights of the lot) about 250W of rubbish illumination. It was the work of a moment and a 4m ladder to rip out the old stuff and replace as follows:
In the kitchen, 75W T12 batten becomes 35W HE T5 batten from PJR Engineering Ltd; 120W PAR38 spotlight becomes 10W LED snoot spotlight from Commercial Lighting Systems Ltd; and the wonderfully elegant R8 fluorescent luminaire from ETAP Lighting NV that provided us with the direct illumination that was missing when we started, so bye-bye, cooker hood lights.
In the craftspace, the 120W PAR38 spotlight gets swapped for a beautiful hand-crafted fabric shade from Townhill Studio, fitted with a funky 24W Lotus CFL lamp from B&Q, just like we said. I reckon that's an energy saving for the entire mezzanine floor of around 250W. And did I mention that it all looks great?

Meanwhile, up in the living space, we're about halfway there. The important thing is to have got light above the dining table. Eating was reaching lunatic proportion as we regularly lost cutlery somewhere on the table. But no more! The most minimal detail imaginable creates a warm glow across the table. It looks like Commercial Lighting Systems has stolen the Award for Excellent LED Solutions, as it's their unit that's hanging up there. We're not finished here, of course. The aluminium strip will become a carrier for another example of Townhill Studios fine textile work.

And we've introduced a brand-new lighting detail. Its all about the end wall of a pitched roof barn and the realisation that there's an awful lot of wall to deal with. Most clients and designers, when faced with a pitched roof expect to have light thrown all over it. I am not of that persuasion. I think there's more interest in what is left half-unseen (kitchen work-surfaces apart), an approach which puts us in the (highly romanticised) territory of a flickering fire and a nightly reading of Beowulf.
But we do have a gable-end to sort out and a 10W LED snoot spotlight to hand. It would be wasted to replace the other PAR38 on the mezzanine, but if I tuck this snoot fixture into the roof truss and point it at the large painting perched on the mantel-shelf then good heavens it looks like we've had a lighting designer in.
Subtle to the point of invisibility, yet so obvious when you take it away.

What's that? You'd like an energy review of the living space? OK including the work yet to be done (see you next month for that), we'll have replaced four 75W T12 battens with four 35W HE battens (yes - dimmable). The LED strip above the dining table is just shy of 35W. So I reckon the living space gives us a saving of about 100W with a vastly improved lighting aesthetic.

We're not finished yet, because that doesn't include all the incidental lighting, where we're finding LED solutions to replace the CFL lamps that had replaced the original 60W tungsten lamps. And that's also before we engage with the Rakos wireless lighting controls, of which much more next month!

Here's the list of supporting manufacturers in The Coach House Re-Lighting Project.
Commercial Lighting Systems Ltd 
ETAP Lighting NV  
Kosnic (UK) Ltd 
PJR Engineering Ltd  
RAKO Controls Ltd 
Townhill Studio 

And thanks once againto my good friends Drew and Holly at Moonstruck Films.