Sturdy plate wanted for mounting a hanging lamp

Hello everyone,

we want to hang a lamp consisting of about 15 glass spheres each weighing 2kg in our "stairwell." The installation will take place at the top of the sloping roof, and the lamps will then hang over 2 floors in an open space.

At the moment, the ceiling is covered with Knauff hardboard panels, and we would mount each sphere individually with flush-mounted inserts.
Distributed over the ceiling surface, this results in about 14kg over approximately 0.7sqm of Knauff panel. Calculated per 1sqm, this would be a load of 20kg/sqm, whereas the Knauff panel can withstand 14.4kg/sqm using cavity anchors according to the datasheet – so too much. Additionally, it would be quite perforated.

So we would prefer to replace the Knauff panel (18mm) with a wooden board or similar that can easily bear the load. What material/wood would you recommend here? The board would then be plastered over.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Hi, how about a screen printing board? It costs around 20-30 euros/sqm for 18 mm thickness if you take a whole board or around 45-50 euros/sqm for exact cutting. It is waterproof glued and very stable. You can get it in any decent hardware store. But I would talk to the painter first to see if you can get the transitions between the screen printing board and the Knauf boards to look good?!? Best regards, Andreas

Yep, screen printing plate is pretty much the final stage when it comes to load capacity. But of course, it has to be sufficiently large to distribute the load over a wide area on the substrate.

Thank you very much for the input! I have asked my painter about the surface. The board will then be approximately 90x100cm, and as a support surface for setting screws, the 3 slats in the photo attached are underneath (there is also a slat below next to the purlin, which can be seen at the very back in the photo).