Bathroom Lighting Scheme with a Demisting Mirror in Matt White

A complete scheme: the same scheme with a front lit demisting mirror in place of the mirror light, which is the version most people actually want once they understand the difference.

Bathroom lighting is the one part of a house where getting it wrong is a safety matter rather than a taste matter, and it is sold almost entirely on photographs. Every listing here states the zone the fitting may be installed in, the IP rating with both digits explained, the colour rendering index, the lumen output and the efficacy in lumens per circuit watt. If a fitting is not suitable above a bath we say so on the page you are buying it from. If a mirror is backlit and will not light your face, we say that too.

Specification

• Zone: zones 1 and 2 and outside the zones, which is every position in a domestic bathroom except inside the bath itself
• IP rating: IP65. Dust tight, and protected against low pressure water jets from any direction. This is the rating for zone 1, which is directly above a bath or in a shower. Every fitting in this scheme that can go in zone 1 is IP65 and the ones that cannot are marked in the pack list
• Dimensions: 6 downlights at 85mm cut out, plus the mirror light and the accessories listed below
• Light output: 3900 lumens total at 88 lumens per circuit watt, which meets the Part L figure of 75 with headroom
• Colour temperature: chosen above, and the whole scheme is supplied at one colour temperature because a bathroom with two whites in it looks like a mistake
• Colour rendering: CRI 95, measured, with R9 above 60. R9 is the deep red value and it is the one that decides whether skin looks like skin. Most bathroom fittings quote a CRI in the eighties and do not quote R9 at all, which is how you end up shaving by a light that makes you look ill
• Dimming: mains dimmable on a trailing edge dimmer, supplied, and every driver in the scheme is from the same family so they dim together rather than in steps
• Electrical: Class 2, double insulated, with an integral constant current driver. No earth required and nothing separate to find a home for above the ceiling
• Fire rating: not fire rated. If the ceiling below is a fire compartment, which it is in a flat and in most two storey extensions, this fitting needs a fire hood or a different product
• Standards: BS EN 60598 for luminaires, BS EN 62471 photobiological safety at the exempt group, BS EN 55015 for electromagnetic emissions, UKCA and CE marked
• Weight: approximately 21.0 kilograms for the whole scheme
• Guarantee: seven years on the fitting, the LED module and the driver
• Finish: a powder coated matt white that disappears into a ceiling, and the cheapest honest finish we stock
• Scheme drawing: a reflected ceiling plan showing every fitting position dimensioned from the walls, supplied as a PDF with the order
• Circuits: one
• Saving: about 15 per cent against the same fittings bought individually
• Efficacy: quoted in lumens per circuit watt, including driver losses

What arrives

• 6 IP65 downlights with integral drivers
• the mirror light or mirror as listed
• a shaver socket to BS EN 61558-2-5
• a trailing edge dimmer matched to the drivers
• IP65 connector blocks and cable glands
• a reflected ceiling plan dimensioned to your room
• a zone drawing showing where each fitting may and may not go

Installation

A registered electrician, most of a day. Electrical work in a room containing a bath or a shower is notifiable under Part P of the Building Regulations in England and Wales. That means it has to be done by a registered electrician or signed off by building control. Replacing a like for like fitting on an existing circuit is not notifiable. Adding a new circuit, a new socket or a new spur is. The scheme arrives with a reflected ceiling plan dimensioned from the walls rather than a suggestion to space them evenly, because evenly spaced downlights in a bathroom put a light directly over the person at the basin and none on their face.

Choosing between this and the alternatives

The case for buying a scheme rather than seven fittings is not the 15 per cent. It is that the colour temperatures match, the drivers come from one family so they dim together, the total load is inside the dimmer's rating, and somebody has worked out where the fittings go relative to the basin and the bath rather than relative to the ceiling. Those four things are what make a bathroom look lit rather than illuminated, and none of them survive buying by the item.