Talk to Your Builder About New, Custom LED Cove Lighting
Many of you are planning to move into a new custom home in the near future.
In all likelihood, your architect, lighting designer or your builder has already arranged for some form of decorative interior lighting.
This arrangement may or may not include cove lighting fixtures for your house.
In either respect, now is the time to ask your contractor to investigate the possibility of a better alternative on your behalf.
New homes are typically built with either rope lights for cove lighting or standard linear fixtures that produce, at best, only average results.
This is not to say they are bad.
Builders today are conscious of the need for energy efficiency and for the need to decoratively enhance every part of a room.
However, the cheaper equipment that often goes into producing this decorative layer of lighting is seldom adequate in producing some of the higher end effects that a custom luxury home deserves.
Cove rope lights offer the distinct disadvantage of a serial electrical array that makes every bulb dependent on the preceding bulb.
If one bulb fails, every bulb behind it fails.
Some rope lights are not even dimmable, making it impossible to control their light output.
It is also very obvious to anyone who looks up at a ceiling lit by these fixtures that rope lighting is being used.
The lamps tend to make visible white spots on the wall rather than producing a continuous, homogeneous glow of light.
Linear cove lighting fixtures overcome all of these obstacles with dimmer controls and glare shields that better distribute and control light output.
This is not where the problem lies, however.
The challenge here lies in the source of the light itself.
Until recently, the most vibrant and warm color temperatures were only available in incandescent and xenon sources.
This meant three negatives for the homeowner.
The cost of operating these LED cove lights would be comparable to operating any incandescent source.
Secondly, the heat output from these lamps would cause the ceiling of the room to heat up and thus increase AC operating costs.
Thirdly, the lamp life on the bulbs was severely limited, and replacement costs were sure to follow in just a few years at best.
LED cove lighting has been around for some time and has attempted to address the energy efficiency and lamp life challenges of traditional sourcing.
However, until the release of the latest generation of LED replacement cove lamps, there was no solution to the problem of forward throw heat.
Either you had to dim your lights, or you had to put up with the higher cost of cooling off your room.
Now, there is a whole series of cove lighting options that feature, for the first time, a bright source of heat free light.
Each festoon LED lamp contains six tiny LEDs that work together to produce the same lumen output as xenon and incandescent while operating at less than one watt per lamp.
These lamps are engineered to operate at a full range of color temperature options and can be matched to any interior architecture or decorative theme.
Anticipated lamp life is 50,000 hours.
You are looking at a decade, on the average, of reliable, cost negligible accent LED lighting.
Ask your designer, architect, or builder to call us to talk more about these options.
Request a linear lighting fixture sample with all the many color temperature options that have now become available.
This will allow him or her to match new cove lighting options directly to your application.
Once a final option is chosen, you can have your fixtures custom built to unobtrusively hide in the ceiling coves so you see only the light, not the fixture, in your brand new home.
In all likelihood, your architect, lighting designer or your builder has already arranged for some form of decorative interior lighting.
This arrangement may or may not include cove lighting fixtures for your house.
In either respect, now is the time to ask your contractor to investigate the possibility of a better alternative on your behalf.
New homes are typically built with either rope lights for cove lighting or standard linear fixtures that produce, at best, only average results.
This is not to say they are bad.
Builders today are conscious of the need for energy efficiency and for the need to decoratively enhance every part of a room.
However, the cheaper equipment that often goes into producing this decorative layer of lighting is seldom adequate in producing some of the higher end effects that a custom luxury home deserves.
Cove rope lights offer the distinct disadvantage of a serial electrical array that makes every bulb dependent on the preceding bulb.
If one bulb fails, every bulb behind it fails.
Some rope lights are not even dimmable, making it impossible to control their light output.
It is also very obvious to anyone who looks up at a ceiling lit by these fixtures that rope lighting is being used.
The lamps tend to make visible white spots on the wall rather than producing a continuous, homogeneous glow of light.
Linear cove lighting fixtures overcome all of these obstacles with dimmer controls and glare shields that better distribute and control light output.
This is not where the problem lies, however.
The challenge here lies in the source of the light itself.
Until recently, the most vibrant and warm color temperatures were only available in incandescent and xenon sources.
This meant three negatives for the homeowner.
The cost of operating these LED cove lights would be comparable to operating any incandescent source.
Secondly, the heat output from these lamps would cause the ceiling of the room to heat up and thus increase AC operating costs.
Thirdly, the lamp life on the bulbs was severely limited, and replacement costs were sure to follow in just a few years at best.
LED cove lighting has been around for some time and has attempted to address the energy efficiency and lamp life challenges of traditional sourcing.
However, until the release of the latest generation of LED replacement cove lamps, there was no solution to the problem of forward throw heat.
Either you had to dim your lights, or you had to put up with the higher cost of cooling off your room.
Now, there is a whole series of cove lighting options that feature, for the first time, a bright source of heat free light.
Each festoon LED lamp contains six tiny LEDs that work together to produce the same lumen output as xenon and incandescent while operating at less than one watt per lamp.
These lamps are engineered to operate at a full range of color temperature options and can be matched to any interior architecture or decorative theme.
Anticipated lamp life is 50,000 hours.
You are looking at a decade, on the average, of reliable, cost negligible accent LED lighting.
Ask your designer, architect, or builder to call us to talk more about these options.
Request a linear lighting fixture sample with all the many color temperature options that have now become available.
This will allow him or her to match new cove lighting options directly to your application.
Once a final option is chosen, you can have your fixtures custom built to unobtrusively hide in the ceiling coves so you see only the light, not the fixture, in your brand new home.
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