Lighting planning for new single-family house construction.. potential for improvement?

Great decision with the classic lighting. We mostly have floor lamps and table lamps; for searching and cleaning, the ceiling light; when working in the kitchen, work lights at eye level – or desk lamp on the desk.

Thus, they only appear on the ground floor kitchen in the concrete ceiling,

Leave it. They are completely wrong there and useless anyway. If you have a lamp with two spotlights there like the three planned next to it, you are well served. Then of course work lights under the upper cabinets.

In the stairwell, we would each provide a wall lamp at half the height of the steps, which would be switched with the ceiling lamp from the upper floor hallway or lower floor hallway.

I would place a ceiling lamp on the landings there.

Difficulties:

- We would have planned a ceiling lamp (with 2-3 adjustable spotlights) in the area between kitchen and dining table to illuminate this transition area.

Make sure it is aligned with the hallway light on the right side, aligned with the pendant light, and the pendant light aligned with the ceiling outlet in the living room.

Wall lamps

Wall lamps are actually no longer used. They interfere with the furniture layout. Rather, you place a sideboard or dresser and then a table lamp on it. There are so many beautiful ones – you can really buy yourself silly. Tip: a proper washbasin in the guest WC. Shower and hand basin do not go together. In the bedroom, have the bedside lamps switched alternately from the door and above the bed.

The placement is one thing, the selection of the lights is another.
With LED light, not only the color temperature (measured in Kelvin and usually classified as "warm," "neutral," and "cool") plays a role, but PWM and the CRI are also highly important.
PWM is pulse-width modulation. It can appear like flickering. You can detect PWM in lights by quickly moving an object like a long ruler or, if in doubt, just a pen back and forth underneath them while rotating it quickly (you don’t need a full rotation, a quarter is enough. If the object seems to move in a "jerky" way as under a strobe light, you have PWM. Unfortunately, many lights perform poorly here. Such light does not contribute to well-being and can even negatively affect mood and health.
CRI is an index that indicates how natural the colors of illuminated objects appear. This is important with LED lighting because this light does not have a full frequency range like a heat light source. The higher the number, the better. I would not want a CRI below 92. From 96 on, it gets really good. Manufacturers that don’t specify the CRI often have weaknesses here. You can compare the CRI by illuminating, for example, the color of a rose with red blossoms and green leaves. You will be surprised how pale some lights appear compared to high-CRI ones.

There is a handbook on lighting design by prediger that I find quite good, in my opinion it is still free. It contains good alternatives for many rooms.

Unfortunately only by yellow post, not as a PDF. Thanks for the hint!

CRI is an index,

Oh, that too. I am actually already sufficiently confused by the "responsibilities" of lux, lumen, and candela.

Hello and many thanks for the numerous and informative feedback.

The Prediger catalog has already been ordered, I might be able to pull out something useful from it.

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Bedroom: think of a single/power switch from the bed, plus at least 2-3 sockets per side of the bed or, if the bed size is known, one wall outlet each for bed/wall lamps.....
We have planned it the same way

It will also be very important what you want to control from where and how. In the end, it shouldn’t be confusing with too many options. I was persuaded to have a motion detector in the hallway, we wouldn’t do that anymore today, but would rather prefer to operate a switch each.
Good point, we need to rethink the switches intensively

....

Tip: in the guest WC a proper washbasin. Shower and handbasin don’t fit together.
In the bedroom, have the bedside lamps switched with a two-way switch from the door and over the bed.

We have planned it that way

If the lights should also serve as work light, they must be in front of you. If the light is behind you, you always have shadows. I would maybe put a wall light in the stove area.

Is there a reason why the ceiling heights are so low?
It is standard with this developer, we have had this all our lives and it has not bothered us so far.

Will the WLAN access points also be installed on the ceiling? If yes, plan for it right away.

The ceiling spots will be installed in the ceiling at the height of the edge of the countertop or a bit further towards the wall so that no shadows are cast.
Our kitchen has no wall cabinets, which is why we want to do the work lighting here using recessed ceiling spotlights. Additionally, we have considered placing a ceiling lamp as general lighting in the middle of the kitchen.

I’ll post a picture of the kitchen plan. (Tall cabinets for pantry and fridge are in the left corner)



Do you have suggestions for the light bulb specifications (wattage, beam angle, color temperature, lumens, ...) we should use here so that the countertop is well lit? Our electrician offered us “RUTEC recessed spotlights made of aluminum die-cast, swivel for MR16.” Can you easily replace the bulb in such recessed spotlights?

WLAN access points per floor will be installed on the ceiling, powered via POE.

Our developer advised us to install spots at the windows/doors in the open plan area to emphasize them. Similar to the following illustration. This is supposed to look very good.
Would you use spots with low wattage and warm light here so that this serves as ambient lighting?
As general lighting for the room, this arrangement along the outer wall hardly makes sense, right?

Does anyone have experience with this?



Best regards
M.

Our builder gave us the tip to install spotlights at the windows/doors in the open plan area to highlight them. Similar to the following illustration. This is supposed to always look very good.

What is supposed to be highlighted in the dark? The dark window? I have never heard or seen that and would put it in the "not necessary" drawer. The general contractor probably wants to make some money somewhere?

Our kitchen has no wall cabinets, which is why we want to do the work lighting here using recessed ceiling spotlights.

One thing cannot replace the other. If you don’t want wall cabinets, then the light has to be on the wall or as a pendant light above the countertop. As several have already mentioned: the ceiling light causes shadows and thus confusion during kitchen work.

What is supposed to be emphasized in the dark there?

Maybe the reflective effect is intended to create an enlargement of the space and thus make the window appear less "dark."

If you don’t want upper cabinets, then the light has to be on the wall or as a pendant lamp above the countertop. As several have already mentioned: the ceiling light causes shadows and thus leads to irritation during kitchen work.

Totally agree. I like to cook very much and often and notice that we didn’t consider this aspect above the kitchen peninsula for interior design reasons. It would be better otherwise. Sometimes I roll over the less’n’more "Jules Verne" battery-powered floor lamp. Then it works great.