Recessed track lighting and spotlights

[ThePoplars]

Looking at lighting for our cinema room now.  We are having a number of standard recessed spotlights and had planned a couple of wall lights.  After looking at where we would be hanging a couple of large paintings in the room and I got to thinking about having the type of tracks you see in galleries so that we could reposition and add LED spotlights if we change the pictures around, add new ones, or if the suggestion of displaying a prized motorbike ever comes to fruition ? (however, having it in the cinema room may be the lesser of two evils).

 

My electrician hasn't ever installed a system like this so I've done a bit of looking around on the internet and discovered recessed tracks exist; the ones I'm looking at are mains powered and don't require a transformer.  I think the difference between single circuit and 3 circuit track is that you can control different circuits to do different things whilst still using the same track in some way, and the spotlights for single circuit and 3 circuit are not interchangeable.  However, I don't know if spotlights for the same circuit type can be swapped between different manufacturers.

 

Does anybody have any experience of using this type of lighting and have any recommendations or advice about what to avoid?

 

[ragg987]

We used this in bedrooms as well as lounge and dining areas: https://intalite.co.uk/slv-145211-eutrac-3-circuit-recessed-track-2m.html

 

Recessed into the ceiling and 3-circuit. As part of a complete lighting scheme based on multiple "layers" of light, they work really well, give flexibility but do cost quite a bit. If recessed properly there is a small lip over the ceiling, quite subtle. The tracks are very strong and you can screw them to the ceiling battens or joists at regular intervals so they are able to carry quite a large weight e.g. for your crystal chandeliers !

 

In our case we used the track to provide 2 circuits, each controlled by it's own dimmer at 230v mains voltage.

• Circuit 1 for pendants (general lighting). SLV have a clip-in adaptor and it is simple to wire your own pendant to it. The adaptor is universal and you can set it to either circuit 1, 2 or 3 on the track.
• Circuit 2 is for spots which I have positioned to accentuate and highlight e.g. wall hangings or work areas.
• Separate to this, we have 5A sockets in walls into which we plug stand-alone floor or table lamps, also controlled by a single dimmer

Full control from one point, no fancy computer controlled lighting and quite effective. I understand the tracks and clip-on are semi-universal, but did not need to deviate from one brand.

 

[PeterW]

I fitted this a while back as it was the best value we could find - the big issue with any of the 3 channel stuff is depth. We ended up having the ceiling overboarded to get the depth and that probably cost more than the track did ...! Its 33mm deep and that means either you have to counter batten your ceilings or plan to just run it between the joists and fit noggins.

 

On another job the spark did he fitted timber battens to the correct width and depth and then got the plasterer to skim up/over them and pulled them out afterwards and slotted the tracks in.

 

As many will tell you - track isn't the cost, its the lights that will be the pricey bit !!

[ThePoplars]

Thanks for sharing your experiences @ragg987 and @PeterW.  That gives me a better understanding, and I'm interested how you've used the adaptors for pendant lights.  It's certainly going to be a lot more expensive than using my old wall lamps that I've got in storage and had intended to use because I was very happy with them.

 

I've found this recessed track which is in clearance https://www.beamled.com/biard-2m-3-circuit-recessed-track-white-60877 (because I think it's been discontinued) but I don't like the lamps that they have from the same brand - hence my question about mixing brands. 

 

I'll have a chat to electrician and builder tomorrow to see how they would work the installation - single circuit might be perfectly sufficient if it's just spotlights for lighting the paintings.