Steve Wurster
09-23-2014, 8:52 AM
I'm in the middle of building a built-in for my office that will have cabinets on the bottom and bookcases mounted on top. The bookcases will each be roughly 65" tall, 26" wide, 15" deep, and there will be 6 of them. All of them will have adjustable shelves, so I don't quite yet know where the shelves are going to go.
The room is as wide as the built-in (just about 13 feet) and I think about 20 feet long. There are windows on the wall opposite the built-in. The door is on the side and is a double french-door style with a transom over top, so some light can at least come in that way during the day. There will be a light on the ceiling in the middle of the room (I installed the box but haven't yet picked a light), and I already have switched wiring ready to connect to the bookcases once they are complete.
So, I'm not sure how I want to light these cases. I was thinking of installing some kind of strip lighting on the inside of the face frames. Spot lighting installed on the top of the cases is out because it only lights the top shelf. And my wife is against any kind of light that sticks out from above the cases. The biggest issues I've seen with strip lighting is that it always looks super bright, and I'm not interested in illuminating the entire neighborhood here.
Has anyone used the products from this company? http://www.ambiance-lighting.com Their cable system lets you just run wiring down the face frame and then it looks like you can install lighting wherever you want (so you can work around how you setup your shelves). I don't know if there is another seller of a similar system. The tape system also looks like you can go with individual sections rather than a long fully lit strip, since as I said I don't know if I like the idea of a wall of lights, but adjusting that in the future seems difficult.
I know these LED systems require transformers, and I'm sure at some point those things go bad. I was wondering if I could install a trap door in the top of one of the bookcases so that I could hide the transformers above them for access. There will be space up there but no air movement, so perhaps that's not a good idea.
Anyone have any other ideas? Thanks!
The room is as wide as the built-in (just about 13 feet) and I think about 20 feet long. There are windows on the wall opposite the built-in. The door is on the side and is a double french-door style with a transom over top, so some light can at least come in that way during the day. There will be a light on the ceiling in the middle of the room (I installed the box but haven't yet picked a light), and I already have switched wiring ready to connect to the bookcases once they are complete.
So, I'm not sure how I want to light these cases. I was thinking of installing some kind of strip lighting on the inside of the face frames. Spot lighting installed on the top of the cases is out because it only lights the top shelf. And my wife is against any kind of light that sticks out from above the cases. The biggest issues I've seen with strip lighting is that it always looks super bright, and I'm not interested in illuminating the entire neighborhood here.
Has anyone used the products from this company? http://www.ambiance-lighting.com Their cable system lets you just run wiring down the face frame and then it looks like you can install lighting wherever you want (so you can work around how you setup your shelves). I don't know if there is another seller of a similar system. The tape system also looks like you can go with individual sections rather than a long fully lit strip, since as I said I don't know if I like the idea of a wall of lights, but adjusting that in the future seems difficult.
I know these LED systems require transformers, and I'm sure at some point those things go bad. I was wondering if I could install a trap door in the top of one of the bookcases so that I could hide the transformers above them for access. There will be space up there but no air movement, so perhaps that's not a good idea.
Anyone have any other ideas? Thanks!