Hi there, Sounds like an exciting time with your project! Having been through something very similar in the last 6 months I have to say, I couldn't agree with your final statement anymore if I tried! We had given very little thought to our lighting and I have to say, what we have ended up with enhances the room more than I couple possibly have imagined! I was a real sceptic about lighting at the outset! We have ended up with a very cleverly 'zoned' lighting system so that we can highlight the kitchen, dining and living areas of our open plan room separately. I am not sure if this is helpful but this is what we ended up with and how 6 months down the line of daily use and entertaining we actually use it in the room; 2 pendant lights on dimmers over a 2.5m dining table, with no downs lights in this area. 3 pendants over our island, also on a dimmer but with down lights in this area. 1 ceiling / pendant light in our seating area with additional down lights in this area. Additionally we have warm led strip lights on open shelving above our sink run in the kitchen. All of our down lights are on a dimmer in the main 'kitchen' and living parts of the room. In reality we next to never have the main down lights on, even with the dimmer as it feels like an airport runway, although I wouldn't want to be without them for the rare occasions where I am prepping a lot of food in the evenings prior to guests arriving etc. Whilst sitting in the living area watching TV we never have the down lights on and most commonly have the dining pendants on for some dim backlighting. When at the dining table we have the pendants there dimmed and use the LED strips on the shelving which creates a lovely glow in the rest of the room as background light. When cooking the LED strip and pendants on full above the island are plenty sufficient. All of the above was created by our very clever designer! Have you thought about getting someone to do you a professional lighting plan? It's a fraction of the cost of your electrics not to mention light fittings! Low hundreds in terms of costs. The other huge advantage from our perspective was we ended up with a very professional PDF document in 'electrician speak' which we were able to print and hand (or email) to the electricians who came to quote for the job. This meant there was no uncertainly, no communication errors and no room for the price to move once we got underway. It also meant we were comparing completely like for like with the different quotes! On top of that our designer got great trade discounts with fabulous lighting companies and passed her discounts onto us! I've attached our floor and lighting plan so you get a feel for the space and some reference to all my comments above. Hope it helps with a few ideas! Best wishes, Claire

We are planning an open plan kitchen extension, however we find it difficult to design the lighting for the room as it is quite big and consists of 3 separate zones (kitchen, living room & dinning room). I attach a diagram to demonstrate the issue: We are not keen in filling the ceiling with spotlights other than the kitchen area to provide the necessary light. We are keen in having nice hanging lights above the island but other than that we do not know how/where to light the rest of the room. Thank you in anticipation.

Speak to your electrician but I don’t think you can do that because the dimmer for LEDs with only 4w bulbs in my house is technically different (although looks the same) from the dimmer operating 42w bulbs.

Hi we think about open plan spaces in terms of zones, so you can zone each area for the different uses, then we think about having different layers of light at low, mid and high level.