# Living Room Led Lighting with MR16



## Wickwack (May 2, 2016)

Hi all,

New to the forum and looking for some advice regarding lighting a large living room with 12 feet ceilings. Requirement is Led mr16 or gu10. We are looking for great lighting, as close to halogen as possible. I have decided to try out the Soraa Vivid tech as it appears to be able to concentrate light with great cbcd on the 10degree spots.

The living room has a total of 12 aimable fixtures. My question is, could all of them be 10 degree spots, to focus on paintings, objects and some of the furniture? Will the reflection of these lights be enough to give enough ambient/general lighting? Or should we place some wider angles on some of the fixtures to distrbute light more evenly? Thanks for any input!


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## Wickwack (May 10, 2016)

Ok so ive been reading more and the answer is obvious. I need ambient lighting which needs to come from a separate source than recessed cans.

So now i will use 3 wall sconces to bounce light of the ceiling to provide for the ambient light... Lux requirement for general living room lighting is around 60 lux, according to the living room size i need about 1700 lumens. 

So the question now becomes, should the 3 wall sconces provide the entirety of the 1700 lumens? or should i adjust due to the fact that even though the recessed mr16 will be 10 degree spots, the light from them will still bounce of paiting/furniture and provide a certain amount of ambient lighting as well?


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## jal (May 11, 2016)

I'm playing with some similar stuff, although in a far more haphazard, experimental fashion. The short of my situation is that the lighting in my place simply sucks in most of the rooms, and since I can't really make it worse, I'm experimenting a lot.

You don't indicate size of the room, other than ceilings. And that will matter, especially if you're going to depend on bounce lighting from the spots. As far as that goes, I'd suggest attempting to mock it up to get an impression - it doesn't have to be anywhere near perfect; just get a sample fixture you're considering and suspend it vaguely in the general area you want it. Block the side spill with cardboard or some such, if needed to imitate the recess. I think you'll find you don't get a whole lot of spill, unless the room is fairly small or you like your paintings exceedingly well illuminated.

Something that I find works nicely is indirect lighting along a wall. LED strips are great for this. (But don't bother with the cheap ones.) One experiment that is staying is just that - I ran about 7 meters of decent LED strip lighting along the back of 2"x1" board (painted appropriately), backed it with aluminum tape (I don't know if that made much of a difference; really should have tried it first without. But it can't hurt.), and made some brackets to allow about 2cm between the LEDs and the wall. It is a nice, mellow indirect glow that melts into the scenery while providing relatively dim, even, diffuse light. Mine is near the top of the wall, but the effect near the floor is nice in some areas, too.

Just a thought.


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