The Dining Room Light
I’ve finished the prototype of the dining room light (pictures here). It’s been hanging for a week now and I’m fairly pleased with the results, though there are some adjustments to be made. Like the gallery lights this fixture uses LED’s. There are four bulbs, each 1 watt, wired with two small power supplies on the ceiling. The drawback to using two power supplies is that I need to run four conductor wire down to the light (which is bulky). The benefit is that all four lights are quite bright.
The body of the light is maple, stained with the dark victorian mahogany stain that we’ve used elsewhere in the house. This matches our dining room table and chairs. The LEDs shine through plastic rod that has plastic tube of the same outside diameter joined to the top. This results in a slight glow from the top sides and a bright glow from the bottom sides. The majority of the light shines down - as is intended. The effect, is very pleasant.
The light hangs from two very thin lines of wire, which are secured for now, with simple plastic screw clips. Once Jo and I have decided on the perfect height for the light I will cut the wire to length and secure it internally (and invisibly).
One of the big problems with the LED bulbs is that the manufacturing process is not perfected at this point. As a result the lights are slightly different colours. They range from a shade of violet-white to a greeny-white. I’ve also had some tinted towards yellow and blue. When the bulbs are made a small amount of phosphure is sprayed onto the inside of the bulb, with the red, orangle, and green bulbs this process is highly tuned, and the colours of those bulbs are very uniform. As it stands right now if I were making these lights commercially I’d have to colour-match all of the bulbs.
I’m going to try another version of the light using plastic for the body. I’m hoping to use blue-tinted plastic so that the light shines down white, but glows outward in a deep blue from the sides. I’m also working on some overheard lights for the ‘bedrooms’, and a couple of other designs for the dining room.
The guys at Eurolite have a whole bunch of brand new prototype LED lights and are getting me a bunch to play with. I can hardly wait.
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- January, 04, 2004