Softbox in the Kitchen

Lighting in the kitchen is both important and challenging and the majority of advice you'll read will use terms like lots, ambient, foc...

Doing the vintage, industrial, warehouse, light thing.

G.E.C. FLP ES27 OK

Extraction

Lighting in the kitchen is both important and challenging and the majority of advice you'll read will use terms like lots, ambient, focused, task oriented. We'll visit the focused, task oriented subject later and show a good example where AR111 LEDs with a narrow angle are used above the domino hobs.

Ambient lighting is the background lighting, it's the light that's not directed at any one thing specifically but instead ensures (or at least should) an even level of continuous light with broad coverage in the area concerned. Ideally it should be soft and not from a point source.

In your typical kitchen you'll see the challenge of providing this lighting solved in two primary ways:

• Hello Mr. Halogen downlighter - the posher you are the more you have. 9 lights and you've not got a kitchen rather it's a butlers pantry, 15 or 21 and now we're talking 
• Fluorescent strip light(s) - these are good for several things; creating a vaguish halloween green tinge when you pick the wrong white balance setting on your camera, creating a pulsing, ticking noise as the starter you promised yourself to replace yet again wakes lethargically to the alarm call of 240 volts and providing a good indication of just how often you eat fried food 

In our specific application we have an additional challenge; ceiling height or to be specific lack of it. We'd considered (and sourced for POC) re-using an industrial explosion proof fixture - imagine a fluorescent tube encased in a thick glass cylinder with large metallic end caps but it proved to be enormous with a drop height greater than that from a standard fluorescent fitting.

When doing the work for a previous project (the cooker hoods) we'd happened to come across a company called EcoLED and the very helpful, knowledgable and general LED guru Guy. Leafing through their book (they're far too cool to have anything as mundane as a catalogue) we'd spotted some aluminium extrusions specifically designed to hold LED strips and offered with both clear and partially opaque diffusers. A plan was hatching helped along by noticing that a lot of TV and films featured large lighting arrays, suspended from the ceiling, typically square or rectangular in nature (see SkyFall, Sky's Fortitude and R.I.P.D. for examples).

We did some proof of concept drawings, gave it a lot of thought time and got back on the phone to Guy. The result was a frank exchange of part numbers and credit card details before heading to eBay for some raw materials.

And with that the pre-amble ends and we dive in to the build...

The basic concept was very simple; rectangular fixture comprising 25mm diameter finned aluminium extrusions. The extrusions would house a high output, warm white LED strip and then be covered with a semi-opaque diffuser to make the individual LED elements invisible. The corners of the fixture would be formed from simple, square blocks of aluminiun to which circular end caps to hold the extrusions would be fitted. These same blocks would be drilled to accept a small post which would hang the block from the ceiling. This post would be hollow allowing cable to routed through it and out through a AN4 fitting. The overall dimensions are something around 1200mm x 800mm.

The build begins with the creation of the corner blocks; 25mm square chunks of aluminium. The blocks have multiple functions; they locate the end caps for the extrusions, they form the corners of the rectangles and they provide the routing path for the wiring - so we'd better get them right!

Corner blocks prior to assembly - just off the lathe

We are not going to detail all the steps - they're covered in the album where you can see it all - just going to call out a few things.

Firstly, and this is a theme with some of our work, we're not scared of asymmetry. Many people seem to view it as an affronty to all that is good but by throwing in a little bit, when it's well judged/planned, it can work well. Why mention this; check out the features on the blocks where asymmetry is not only used it's an essential part of being able to go so small with them

Getting power to the LED strips themselves is a bit of a challenge. With a larger corner block we could have routed wiring in from the ends but larger blocks (and we did small POCs with 3 different sizes) just looked clumsy. In the end the solution was both simple and a key part of the design. The blocks hang from a rod which is bolted through the ceiling. The rod is formed from a hollow alluminium tube which is threaded at the bottom allowing a right angled AN4 fitting to be attached (AN4 is just a pipe standard, if you like cars you'll have seen these types of fittings before). So the arrangement is Rod > Ceiling > Rod > Block > Fitting. The wiring travels down the rod and out through the fitting and is clad in a fibreglass sheath so it all looks tidy.

Corner block full assembly 

Ok, that's power out of the ceiling and heading in the right direction but now there's the issue of getting that wiring into the end caps. This took some trickery with the lathe, an arbor and a KRESS high speed spindle. You can see the setup in the album and the end result was some neatly angled holes in the end caps allowing the sheathed cable to enter and reach the LED strip. It also created an interesting detail on the arbor which is likely to drive another project but more on that later.

The real challenge with this project turned out not to be the fabrication but rather the installation...

We've got to install a large (dimensionally though, fortunately, not weightily) fixture; a process that will require drilling 4 12mm holes straight through a recently boarded, skimmed and painted ceiling. It's got to sit central relative to the floor area (which is not the same as central relative to the ceiling area) and it's got to be pretty accurate as there's not much room for movement.

You've heard that old adage of measure twice, cut once - this was more like measure n times, then n times again, then think about it, think about it a bit more, commit and hope for the best. On the detail pictures of the blocks you may have noticed the small set-screw - this clamps the block to the rod (the fitting serves an additional function here in that it makes it impossible for the block to fall off) and allows a small amount of height adjustment for each block. In the finished pictures you can see the light doesn't appear level - it is, the ceiling is all over the place, which is not surprising given it's over 200 years old lath and plaster with 12mm plasterboard on top

Close up of installed corner block, the film on the right hand side protects the diffuser and will be removed 

It's very difficult to photograph the light and slightly less tricky to articulate the feeling the light gives off. We used the word Softbox in the title because that's what it seems like. You're aware of the light source but as desired it's non-directional - imagine a cloudy day where the light is essentially flat. It will provide a solid foundation layer upon which to add further lighting for task and feature areas.

There was a fair amount of bespoke work involved in this project but credit must go to EcoLED and the excellent aluminium profiles which made this possible.

Too hard to photo, just accept it works well... 

You can view the full album associated with this post by clicking me!