One of the design challenges of a house, is creating an electrical layout. Some things are obvious, like outlets for appliances and general outlets throughout. Switch locations also are typically easy. You place them in locations that you enter a room. One of the things that is not so obvious is how best to light the space. I designed all the spaces to maximize natural daylight and while there are places for special pendant lights, I wanted most of the lighting to not be so obvious.
Design Criteria
1. The majority of fixtures to utilize LED bulbs if not specifically LED fixtures.
2. Minimize cans. We are paying extra special attention to our air sealing. After doing extensive research online, we decided to forgo the use of cans in our ceilings where there is also insulation. This means most of our upstairs.
3. Low cost. It is very very easy to spend lots of money on electrical fixtures. Not so easy to find aesthetically pleasing inexpensive fixtures. I will do more posts on this later.
4. Providing enough light, but not over doing it. In our current home, which is very similar space to our new main room space, we over did the lighting. There are 4 cans in the kitchen we never use and a track light at the ceiling we never use and 2 cans over our sofa, that Neil dislikes when I use to read...so I now have a reading lamp.
Even after creating this lighting plan, it is important to do multiple walk throughs with the electrical contractor. We made a few changes to lamp locations after seeing either conflicting framing or just rethinking what we want while in the space. Ideally all the fixtures are chosen ahead of time so they can be placed in right spot, but the reality is, I know generally what the fixtures will be (sconce, pendant, light strip, track) just haven't selected and bought them yet.
