Gallery lighting

[valpendleton]

Good morning everyone. We are looking to change our lighting system in the gallery. At the moment we have tracks with screw-in spotlights, which we seem to go through like anyone's business. We've been looking at those 'fixed- spot -35w -halogen' type tracks from B&Q, Ikea etc. Does anyone use these in their gallery ? If so , how to you get on with them ? Are they economical ? Do they throw sufficient light onto the walls ( we've got a reasonbly high ceiling in the shop) ? We'll probably have a different sort over the area where we deal with the customers & have the framing samples etc. Any suggestions there too ? Thanks in advance. Val at Rightangle

[prospero]

I put up tracks when I first moved in nigh-on 20 years ago and I'm just coming round to thinking that I should have left the 5ft flurry tubes that were already there. Mine are 60w spots anf there are thirteen of them so they aren't exactly frugal on the lecky, although I seldom have them all on at once.
They work fine in lighting up pics on the wall, but I think a few less plus a bit of more economical background light would be better.

[valpendleton]

Thanks Prospero !

[prospero]

btw. Don't buy bulbs from the big DIY sheds. You can get them online from peeps like Screwfix for a fraction of the price especially if you but a dozen or so at a time.

[valpendleton]

thanks again Prospero. I didn't think about Screwfix , even though I buy my screws there !..doh!

[Abacus]

I changed my 60w spots for 35w, bought online from wilco, 50p each


http://www.wilko.com/light-bulbs+access ... vt/0244308

But I'm now thinking of changing to led spots, just waiting for a good offer to come up.

[FFrames]

Go LED!.. I'm just doing my space up and have installed 2 long 5 meter suspended tracks with LED light fixtures and they look great! The good thing about them is that you can add and change lights as you need. I had mine suspended, but you can just screw the tracks directly onto the ceiling if you prefer.

These are the ones I got...

http://www.modernlightingsolutions.co.u ... -grey.html

They are pretty pricey but will cost a hell of a lot less to run... Each light uses 11W of power giving lighting equivalence of 100W! They're pretty big too! I'll take some snaps if you're interested... Oh and if you did want to go with them ask for a discount.. I didn't pay that list price!

[valpendleton]

They look smart FFrames. Thank you for that. We've bought a daylight fluorescent strip over the 'choosing' area & halogen spots on a track for the display wall. That doesn't mean we'll use them though...the electrician isn't coming till Tuesday!!