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caren_weiner

Lighting for Open Floor Plan

Caren Weiner
10 years ago

We are just starting construction on a complete renovation of a 2600 sq ft. single story, cinder block, waterfront home we recently bought in Florida. We have 8' ceilings and an open floor plan with the entire back of the house having floor to ceiling glass sliders. Other than that, there are no windows in the main living area or kitchen. There will be a double door for the front entry which will have full privacy glass panels.

We have been researching GardenWeb for help with lighting design. We will have LED cans in the kitchen and mini pendants around the curved island. We will have a medium chandelier over the dining room table. The problem is what to do everywhere else. As there are wide open spaces between the walls and we want our seating to be focused on the waterfront view, we will need to rely heavily on recessed lighting plus there will be a ceiling fan with a light. We are eastern-facing so we get the morning light. The house does seem to get quite dark in the afternoon and that's been during the summer - winter will certainly be worse. Our contractor has said we can install floor outlets as we are replacing all of our floor tile but we don't know our furniture placement and don't want to guess where the right place on the floor for an outlet might be because we would probably be wrong and an outlet will stick out like a sore thumb on our very light colored, marble-like tile floor. For the bedrooms, there will be ceiling fans with light fixtures on a dimmer, plus table lamps. Not sure what to do in the long, narrow hallway where the secondary bedrooms and bath are.

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated. Also, is a local lighting store the best choice to go to for professional help with lighting design?

Thank for the help! The knowledge in the GardenWeb community is amazing!

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