The main thing I take from your post is the attraction to how the light looked when bounced off the ceiling. I assume you had it setting on a table.
From such a low point such as on a table, a single floody light can light most of the ceiling of an average sized room. But this placement and point of emission is not ideal for a normal room light, as typically with up lights you want the source of the light to be above eye level, so that you don’t see the source of it when sitting or standing.
In my living room I have a pole uplamp that is 6ft tall.
It illuminates a portion of the room well but does not have the same moody effect as setting a flashlight on the coffee table in the middle of the room. Even though the lamp and flashlight make similar lumens.
You could just use a pole style uplamp with a bright LED bulb in it.
But the difference is it will likely be placed in a corner, and it’s light source will be closer to the ceiling than a flashlight ceiling bounce from a table. The effect is lost.
I am more a functional person i hate down lights because of the maintenance but they do look nice. I think with LED technology downlights have come a long way.
Yes, I did place it unrealistically low right on the top of the coffee table. That is why it looked so good bouncing of the ceiling and flowing down the walls. Very sleuth of you to figure that out! Bummer really as it would be quite difficult to re-create that effect. Still going to play around with a few ideas to see if I can create that effect for her.
A 50w halogen bulb in a clear vertical glass cylinder. Because it's nearly winter up here and we almost never see the sun for months, very often I turn on my 50W, 6500 lumen LED work light and that works for creating a very cheerful winter indoors, but the light itself is just that, a work light and I just have it sitting on the floor.
You would like to have better color rendering for a room light. See this thread: High CRI led bulbs
If you want a cooler light of about ~4000k, with a high CRI I would recommend the Osrams 4000k 95CRI with high R9 value.
Higher than 4000k is not good for living rooms, and lower than 90CRI is also not good for living rooms. So this is the closest you can get to a pleasant cool light that renders colors as it should. (You would need 3 of these with a 30-40w driver)
4000 lumens really isn’t that much light for a living room. It would be in the same ballpark as 2 4’ LED strip lights. By comparison, fluorescent tubes (I understand you’re not interested in fluorescent) would put out slightly more but use quite a bit more energy.
I used to do electrical engineering work a long time ago. In computer rooms, etc… we would spec indirect lighting. Some times they would be inverted tube lighting systems suspended from the ceilings and/or bare lamp strip lights mounted in indirect wall mounted light soffits.
We have large 4 lamp 4’ fluorescent (retrofitted with LED tubes) fixtures in our living room for when guests are over. but generally, I prefer indirect lighting to direct lighting and to achieve this at home, I use LED bulbs in torchier style floor mounted lights. The bulbs I use output about 800 lumens and fit in standard screw sockets. The torchiers I use have opaque shades which allow some direct light. If you wanted to go completely indirect, I imagine you could fashion some sort of foil shield, but if you mounted it inside the bulb area, you’d need to be very careful of not creating anything which could possible cause a short. Then again, foil outside the shade would look pretty ugly. Painting the interior of the shade white would be a reasonable compromised in my opinion, but you’d look efficiency.
Perhaps you could retrofit some torchiers, convert for low voltage. This would reduce the risk should a short occur. If you could get the right tint, P60 drop-ins might not be a bad option.
Sorry, didn’t see the 240 sqft size. 4k lumens might be overkill. Sometimes I ceiling bounce my BLF A6 and that produces very nice results (before it gets too hot). Another option if you are looking for an indirect solution are wall mounted sconces. To test results, I’ve used magnets to attach some of my lights to the dry wall screws.
BTW, one thing I really like about the Jetbeam Jet-1 MK is that the tail is threaded to match a tripod. This makes for an easy temporary floor mounted indirect light.
What I did in the bedroom was to put up some crown molding with the top of it 6” from the ceiling. Then I just dropped some rgb + ww LED strips into it. It’s very nice indirect lighting and I have complete control over the intensity and color from my phone. You could also go with remote control or wall mounted options as well.
Yes, ceiling-bounced floody flashlights, from table-height, give a fantastic lighting effect. It practically eliminates shadows, and makes everything appear much softer under the light. It’s hard to get that effect with standard household lighting. You might be able to do something similar with wall-mounted lights directed upwards to bounce light off the ceiling at an angle. Kind of like you see in some movie theaters or museums.
I don’t find the flashlight distracting when I bounce it, as long as I’m not standing in the direct path of the spill.
Yes, with a 300 or 500 watt halogen bulb, they give off a very nice light that is bright enough for almost any room. The only downside is that they’re usually only 6 feet tall, and so taller people can see the bulb which is very intense. Well, they also use a lot of electricity, but you don’t get CRI 100 any other way.
i do not think you’ll find any factory made light that has 1 led running on max current, they always use multiple leds running at 1\2 or less of max current.
so if you want 4000lm xhp70 room light, you’ll have to build your own.
i gutted my 600w halogen light in my bathroom and replaced bulbs with 9 xml leds 80+cri, running at 900ma, it is even brighter that halogen was. sure i could have used 2-3 mtg2 at max current to get same amount of light, but leds run more efficient and make less heat at lower current.
That was the case. I have one 500w halogen in my home. I have converted it 4 years ago with 3xE27 bulbs. 13.5W led times 3 is 45W for 4000lumens. And now there are many of those with a E27 bulb that can fit a LED with no problems. It will be a lot dimmer, but they are really cheap. Ikea has one for 5euros. The led bulb is more expensive than the fixture. And you can put multiple fixtures, and distribute the lights better.
I have wired the sockets that have the floor and table lamps to be on a light switch, so you do not have to turn each one individually. With smart bulbs you can have a similar setup.
Would like to thank everyone here for some really good info. The idea I kind of like the most at the moment is the one where I can wrap the whole living room with a led strip up under the crown molding and connect it to a switch that can turn it on or off as well as change the color like this one I found on aliexpress On/off color switch
I will secretly purchase and plan the whole thing and build most of it at my relatives house and when my wife is with her friends for a couple of hours, I will have it all set up in our house without her knowing and surprise her when she comes back!
4000 lumens really isn’t a lot for a room that size, especially if you’re using lampshades. Every room in my home has over 4000 lumens. It’ll may seem like a lot because most homes are incredibly poorly lit compared to offices and produce departments. That said, you’ll probably like the lighting a lot better if that 4000 lumens is distributed around the room. The led strip you’re thinking about is one way to do that. If you have high ceilings and lighting with a ceiling bounce, 4000 lumens will get eaten up real quick.
Low ceilings actually, just under 8ft. We never wear sunglasses, so bright lights bouncing of the ceiling look very good and not so bright at all for 4000 lumens. We have white walls and ceilings which makes it much easier to create a nice effect, so I'm eager to make this happen. Would you or anyone else know of good quality led lighting that can change color? I purchased a few about a year ago for my pc and 30% of the lights are already gone, so would like something that is more reliable than the ones I got and that can be dimmed.
