Lighting with loft

[ellbaker]

I am doing the rough in for electric and am wondering how others have placed lights in the main room with the loft. My main floor is cathedral ceiling with a 14' loft area in a 34' room. I plan on putting a light with fan 8' from the gable wall on the exposed beam. I doubt this will be enough light for this large of a room. What is your lighting lay out?

Is it also good to have some light come on in the loft when the living room light is on?  It seems to me that it may feel dark if the loft is not lighted when the living room light is on.

[dug]

I am working on the same thing now in a similar situation,

I am also hanging a fan/light in the center of the open area but from the ceiling and extending it to just above the rafter ties. I also built a little 18 inch wide shelf/beam along the middle of the tall gable wall to stiffen it up (as suggested by Don P) and am putting can lights there. Also I am installing a few sconces on the walls directing light up for ambience. I was thinking of putting a few small lights on the beams but will probably skip it to keep things simple, and there's always lamps if that isn't enough.

[ScottA]

I have a large fan with a light hanging from the center of my vaulted cieling. I also have a light under the loft and several around the edges of the room. The fan light alone is fine for most things. If we are playing games at the table I need to turn more lights on but there's plenty of light.

[davidj]

Our lighting in the main room of our 20x30 is:

i) two wall lights on the "lounge" side of the great room
ii) one hanging light in the "dining" area (one of these)
iii) two recessed lights in the "kitchen" area
iv) a wall light in the loft that is 3-way switchable from the same box as the kitchen light as well as a local switch
v) a couple of high switched outlets at each end for decorative lights (Lisa's suggestion - we've got windows high in the gable wall and apparently they're perfect for surrounding with Christmas lights!)

At this point it's difficult to know how well the whole setup works as we've got scaffolding in the dining area and $1000 of pine sitting in the lounge area, but it seems fine.  But being on solar, and usually having only two of us there, I wanted to be selective about which bits are lit -  100W of solar capacity buys you a lot of switches, boxes and romex! 

But if I was doing it again I'd try and skip the recessed lights. They're on the cathedral ceiling so they're maybe 12' above the floor - CA code requires they be fluorescent and consequently they don't give out a lot of usable light.  I'd just stiick with undercabinet lighting and maybe throw up another wall fixture nearby on one of the other circuits.  And I think the "decorative" light circuits are only there due to my marital status!!

[rwanders]

I struggled with this problem too---didn't want to put recessed lights in ceiling. Considered putting some track lights along the ridge beam but didn't want to mar a great looking beam. I have a 14' by 4' wide walkway from loft across center of open area to second floor porch---ended up putting some nice track lights along both sides of walkway on dimmer switches--some floods pointed up to light up the beautiful t&g ceiling. Works pretty well and I can actually reach the fixtures from walkway to adjust or change bulbs.

The difficulty of getting to light fixtures on the cathedral ceiling which was 24' off open area and up to 15 feet off loft floor was a major barrier to placing lights in ceiling or on ridge beam for me.  Had a similar situation on a townhouse----the d___ light fixture on bottom of fan was 20' above a staircase---thank god it never burned out.

I put a wall sconce on the stair landing and more wall sconces on the gable end of the 10x24 loft. added a ceiling fan/light  8' from gable end of walkway. Stairwell and loft sconces were switched so we could energize from first floor. Wall fixture above kitchen sink/stove area plus a few floor and table lights and the dark Alaskan nights were good to go.