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Article Tip
Walking up and down your stairs with no lights will result in
severe health problems due to falling. Stairway and Staircase
lighting can be done in many ways. The most common way of
lighting a stairway during the day is installing windows or
skylights in the stairwell area. At night time you will need
special lighting that will require switches at the bottom of the
stairway in the top of the stairway. The switches are three-way
electrical switches and will provide you with great safety.
Stairs, Staircases and Lighting
By Courtney Beard
Falls on
staircases can be major cause of accidents in the home,
surprising it is often the smaller staircases e.g. split level
stairs which can be the most dangerous. Often risks to a stairs
user can be caused by lighting that falls in pools, leaving
other areas dark or encourages shadows when it is necessary to
see clearly. It is essential that practicality and safety is
placed first over sexy lighting design features.
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Staircases should convey a sense of airiness and be welcoming.
Quite often, stairwells and landings do not have windows or at
least ones that cannot be opened. Even if fresh air is
circulating through open doors from ventilated rooms, the air
will not appear to be fresh. If a stairwell does have a window,
the sunlight streaming in will give the impression of freshness,
and these windows should have the minimum amount of curtaining
possible. |
If there are no openings for natural light, you will have to
create the impression of sunlight by trickery. One common trick
is the skylight, which allows the maximum daylight stream down
the entire length of the stairwell with the added bonus of being
top lighting.
Another is to put in plain glass doors that lead into rooms off
the staircase and borrow the light from their windows. Finally,
in new houses there are small openings with wide reveres which
can be designed at strategic angles of the stair. These tricks
can be supplemented by introducing artificial light to increase
the effect.
Light “borrowed” from other rooms can be enhanced by placing
table or floor lamps in areas of the room where their rays can
blend with the daylight. The wide ledges created by the obtuse
opening angles of the wall slits can be used for table lights or
lights concealed in the opening’s top.
With new houses, it is easier to allow the maximum light to flow
into the halls and staircase because you are able to construct
the house to suit, unlike older houses with other conditions.
Diffused light created by translucent shades or other covers
placed in front of both daylight and artificial light provide an
overall soft glow. This technique is excellent for halls and
stair landings where close work such as reading are never done,
but where you need to see steps and obstacles.
Strong lights can be built into the staircase wall at baseboard
level, giving the treads a beam of brightness. Modern light
fixtures can be mounted into the staircase itself, great care
and attention is required when considering this technique.
For more information regarding our range of products, staircase
and balustrade options available, visit our celebrated web site
– www.stairking.com.au.
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