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A Guide to Bathroom Lighting
When planning your bathroom lighting, there are a few key aspects to consider to ensure you achieve the desired results, whilst paying attention to current lighting regulations. In this guide, we’ll cover those key areas you need to consider, avoid those often seen lighting mistakes and recommend some key lighting products for the bathroom.
How to plan your bathroom lighting?
When considering bathroom lighting, there are potentially a lot more light fittings available than you may first realise. The best lit bathrooms will use a combination of the following, depending on the bathroom size and the results desired: ceiling downlights, LED strip under cabinets; small marker lights in niches, sills, and around the edge of the bath; LED lit mirrors and mirror surround lights; wall lights and even pendant lighting.
Of course, you don’t need to use all of these, but having an understanding of what’s available will help you to consider your ‘circuits’. You can of course just switch all your lighting with a single simple light switch. However, it can be much more pleasant to have several lighting circuits, controlled by dimmers or other intelligent lighting controls, to create nice ambient lighting, when relaxing in the bath for example.
Firstly, it is a good idea to plan your task lighting, initially focusing on the mirror and the area around the mirror. This is where you will likely be applying makeup or shaving for example so the lighting will want to be good. Side lit works best, and preferably a light on either side of the mirror. If you are fortunate to have a double sink unit, you may be able to include 3 mirror lights, again on either side of twin mirrors. Pre-lit LED Mirrors are also a popular choice but generally, the light temperature will be of a cooler white light output, usually around 4000k colour temperature.
Generally, we recommend using colour 3000k Warm White for bathroom mirror lighting. We have a huge range of Astro mirrors and wall lights for the bathroom, with style dictated by your preference. Bear in mind if you want your mirror light to have a dimmable option, you will have to check the features of the product. Our handy product filter can be used to find the exact product by type or style.
Now we have our mirror lighting in place, we can start to plan the remainder of our amenity lighting. This is the general lighting for the bathroom often in the form of ceiling lights or downlights.
If you are using a regular ceiling flush light fitting, it is useful to know that many of our products sit within ranges or families, so you may be able to find a ceiling light to match the style of your wall and mirror light. The Mashiko family for example by Astro Lighting, includes 35 different products, in varying styles and finishes. Ceiling lights are good for giving an even light distribution, and where you are replacing existing fittings. However, our preference is for downlights, which will need to be rated to IP65 for use in the shower cubicle or other Zone 1 areas. The stunning Vetro range for example, with their glass gloss white or gloss black finish, look stunning and performs well as a bathroom specific downlight. They are even available in round or square, twin or single, and are recessed and dimmable with a baffled light output, to reduce glare. When positioning downlights be careful of the following:
- Avoid placing directly above the sink mirror area. This can cause glare in the sink, and placing light directly above the mirror can cause unwanted shadows on the face. Trust us, you’ll look better for it, if you just rely on the mirror lighting.
- Do not place directly above the head end of the bath. Again when relaxing in the bath, who wants a downlight shining straight in their eyes.
- Be careful when placing above large shower heads, such as the rain shower heads. The light will reflect straight off the top of the shower head, back onto the ceiling giving unwanted results.
Pendant lighting specifically for the bathroom is also now increasingly popular, particularly for those bathrooms in period properties or with particularly high ceilings. Astro Lighting offers a small range of more contemporary pendant lights for the bathroom, whereas Forum Lighting offers a rather stunning SPA range of bathroom specific chandeliers, ideal for Zones 2 and 3.
Great news, we now have our task and amenity lighting, so it’s time for the pretty stuff, or the ambient and accent lighting. Creating a welcoming scene to any room relies on having different levels and availability of light sources and fixtures. This is where your creativity can flow, with less rules. If possible, lighting up shower or bath niches will always look great offering a depth to your bathroom lighting.
Our range of marker lights from Collingwood is perfect for this job. Bear in mind, that LED drivers will normally be required to be accessible in the event of failure. This is fine when upstairs, as they can often go in the loft or cupboard, but your installer may need to be more creative if this isn’t an option.
If your bath is being inset, with a tiled surround, a really nice effect can be to place these marker lights to work as mini uplights, scalloping light up the wall.
Low level wall lighting will also create a calming environment and can be perfect for those occasional nighttime visits, where the main lighting isn’t required. Here, we recommend the great looking and extensive Borgo range from Astro Lighting. Our top tip, put these lights on an occupancy sensor which triggers on movement, and automatic switch off after a set period of time.
You’ll love the fact that at night, you can just wander in and out of the bathroom without switching on the main lights and fan, thus avoiding disturbing other family members.
Led strip under cupboards and floating sink units also looks great, and gives the appearance of space. With all these accent lights, bear in mind colour temperature again. Normally you don’t want to mix cool white and warm white, as the bathroom lighting won’t look in harmony. The good news is, most of the lights can be found in colour 3000k.
What are bathroom zones and IP ratings?
Bathroom zones refer to the distances around the wet areas, such as baths and showers. Only certain lights can be placed in Zone 1, Zone 2 or Zone 3. Anything suitable for Zone 1, will also be fine in Zone 2 and 3 of course. The distances which relate to the zones are very specific and correspond to the IP rating of the fittings.
IP ratings are expressed as a number, where the first number relates to ingress from solid objects such as dust, and the second number relates to ingress from water. For the bathroom we are only really concerned with the second number, so anything rated IPx5 or above is suitable for Zone 1.
Zone 1 – The area directly within a shower cubicle and directly surrounding the bath is Zone 1, with a height 225mm from the floor. Whilst IPx4 would theoretically be suitable for Zone 1, we would stick to only those products rated IPx5, as jets of water can often be used for cleaning purposes. Or if like me you have children, it can be quite surprising how they often seem to spray water across the entire bathroom, thus turning it into a temporary wet room!
Zone 2 – Essentially stretches the area of Zone 1 a further 60cm and also covers the area around the sink to a radius of 60cm. Any lighting rated IPx4 would be suitable in Zone 2.
Zone 3 – This covers everywhere else, where you would not expect jets of water, so products rated IPx0 are fine to use.
All of the lights in our Bathroom Section are rated for Zones 2 & 3, which covers most of your installation needs. For Downlights and Marker Lights, please check the individual filters or use the filtering function to narrow down your search.
Can I use lighting control or scene setting in the bathroom?
For those homes with multiple circuits in one room, the perfect solution may be a lighting control system. Certainly, you can put multiple circuits onto a 2, 3, or 4 gang dimmer switch, but a more automated solution with the ability for scene control is hard to ignore. These don’t have to break the bank, especially when forming part of a refurb project.
The expandable Ra2 system from Lutron for example offers the ability to control multiple circuits from simple battery operated light switches, with the dimmer or switch modules hidden away in the ceiling. At the touch of a button, or even using voice command, you can set a morning scene where the lights bring up slowly avoiding that initial glare on a dark morning, or perhaps set up a bath scene, where only the ambient lighting is lit. Better still, as the Pico light switches use a long life battery, rather than wired, they can be placed safely within the bathroom.
For a full rundown of the system see our Lutron Ra2 article.
As mentioned it is also worth considering using stand alone occupancy sensors, which can trigger some or all of the lights. The beauty of these is not having to worry about leaving the lights on when the room is unoccupied.
How much lighting do I need in my bathroom?
As you can see above there is a wide choice available for lighting your bathroom, using simple but effective techniques. So, here is another top tip – don’t over light your bathroom. By allowing darker areas, means that you can actually see the lighting effect you have created. Generally speaking, downlights are a great choice for a bathroom but also the product we see most over used in the home.
In the bathroom if you focus on those key areas you need task lighting, maybe just the entrance, the sink, and toilet area and the shower cubicle for example. It’s possible to use well placed accent lighting for all the other areas.
As a guide, any downlight producing over 400 lumens will adequately achieve the required 150 lux levels in a bathroom. For mirror lighting, it is recommended to achieve 300 lux, but if you consider how close you are to a bathroom mirror, all of our mirror lights are suitable for this purpose. For those lights which require separate light bulbs, again aim for 400 lumens and over, which these days could be as low as a 4w LED candle bulb.