Our perception of a room most often depends on its illumination. A properly selected balance of light and shadow can make a room visually much more spacious, and with a limited amount of light there is a chance to show a room smaller than its true size. Floor lighting is an excellent design opportunity to emphasize the originality and sophistication of the home interior. However, you need to know some of the subtleties that we will talk about in our article. Any 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, we will choose the appropriate type of backlight and immediately talk about some important features when choosing fixtures.
Rules for choosing lighting for floor lighting
- Light sources used for illumination should be protected as much as possible from moisture and dust. Wet cleaning often carried out in residential areas can lead to malfunctioning of fixtures or even a short circuit. For example, in the hallway, where lighting can also be installed on the floor, depending on the weather, dirty puddles often flow down from seasonal shoes. We also note that summer dust from shoes, although it does not cause enormous damage to installed lighting devices, can nevertheless adversely affect their work.
- Impact-resistant enclosures in which light elements are located are required.
- The materials of the fixtures must be non-combustible to ensure the necessary level of fire safety.
- Another important factor is the low power consumption of the installed backlight. Currently, LED strips and lamps are used for these purposes.
- Floor lighting should not dazzle when looking at it. Therefore, special scattering lenses are used and a warm emission spectrum is selected that is close to natural sunlight.
Economical options
To ensure the greatest energy savings, they often set dimmers and devices that turn on the light when someone is in the room. Such devices have a motion sensor, which operates on the basis of receiving infrared or sound waves from a moving person. There are also combined versions. Most devices have the ability to fine-tune the sensitivity of the sensors, which will give obvious advantages when using them. Of the main ones, these are:
- Automatic inclusion of 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 off itself in the absence of movement.
Lighting options
Let's talk about the types of fixtures. The variety of the market for lighting devices in our time is extremely large. Nevertheless, there are several types of fixtures that are used as the basis for floor lighting:
- Spotlights;
- LED strip
- neon lamps;
- flexible neon;
- light floor;
- LED duralight.
Consider the features of each of the proposed options separately.
Spotlights
They are the most affordable and common type of devices for lighting the floor. Their main convenience is the ability to be embedded in special holes in the side walls, baseboards, laminate or furniture. The following advantages are characteristic of them:
- impact resistance;
- long period of operation;
- the ability to install different types of bulbs;
- decorative appearance;
- moisture resistance.
The latter quality is especially evident in this type of floor lighting fixtures, allowing you to install them in the kitchen and even in the bathroom.
Neon lights
They are another common way to organize backlighting. During their work, they emit a soft and even light. Since the device of the lamp 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 around 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 selection of lighting colors;
- long term of work.
Their cons are also present:
- quite high cost;
- high fragility of the lamps during installation, the need to prepare a special place for the backlight.
LED strip
LED floor lighting is now gaining popularity due to its low price and low power consumption. Therefore, such tapes are used as 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 included to control the controller. In addition to those listed, this floor lighting has the following advantages:
- lack of difficulties during installation;
- long operating mode;
- availability of products with a wide range of colors;
- high flexibility in the arrangement of recessed floor lighting.
LED duralight
It is a transparent PVC tube with integrated 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 has its advantages:
- simplicity of laying and further connection to the power supply through a plug;
- the presence of modifications with several rows of multi-colored LEDs in the handset, which gives a special originality to the interior.
Flexible neon
This built-in floor lighting is a hybrid between the LED strip and the 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 emitted is smooth and diffused, like a neon lamp. Of the main advantages of its use are:
- flexibility of laying direction;
- high performance (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 rarely used, with the help of such modules a unique room style is created. Due to its functional use, the light floor has the following advantages:
- high shockproof properties;
- good moisture resistance.
Mounting Features
Sales and installation services of spotlights on the market are the most popular in our time, so we will give information for its independent installation. Illumination from spotlights is most often located at 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.
The main stages of installation
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 takes place before the floor covering is installed: plywood, boards, laminate, chipboard, tile or other elements.
- In a wooden coating, wires are placed between the lags. In the place of installation of fixtures do bends. They are calculated so that it is possible to output contacts 10 or 15 cm outward beyond the front side of the coating for convenient connection of the ceiling.
- At the locations of the fixtures, as they are installed, holes of the desired diameter are cut for the further arrangement of shades with fixtures in them.
- If the coating is ceramic tile, then it is advisable to lay the wires before pouring the concrete screed, making bends for this. In the places of connection of lighting fixtures, metal or plastic landing capsules for shades are installed, the ends of the wires are wound in them. After this, you can start pouring concrete mortar screed. It is necessary that the capsule assembly together with the ceiling protrude above the screed over the distance that will be needed to lay the tiles. In this case, the front plane of the floor and the lamp will be on the same level. This technology eliminates drilling in concrete screed holes using a special cylindrical crown with diamond nozzles.
- Necessarily all contact wire connections are very tightly insulated with a heat-shrink tube or silicone. The most commonly used shrink tubing, because working with it is extremely simple in practice and its insulating qualities are not inferior to industrial insulating materials.
- After installation of the wiring and laying of the floor covering, spotlights are connected and fixed to the ends of the taps.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we add that each type of backlight has its own characteristics of the issued maximum illumination and power consumption. Therefore, the illumination of the floor in the corridor, bedroom or any other room should be selected based on the dimensions, level of illumination and functionality. In addition, it is recommended to submit in advance the final view of the room with the presence of the backlight on and choose the most harmoniously fitting color scheme