The Lamp Room

As much as I'd love to fully light my house with vintage battens, it isn't going to happen. I've been looking on eBay etc and found this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252789877655

Now I've seen these modern 'decorative' battens quite a bit, but never really thought about buying one until now. It looks to tick all the boxes, it's smart looking so the wife will approve (probably), it's a good size but best of all it's still good old linear fluorescent, even if it is T5 and HF. Also for smaller rooms I could convert it to HE 14w and leave it as HO 24w for larger areas. Cheap too at £30 delivered.

So has anyone here used this or any similar type of modern decorative fluorescent fitting?

I nearly got one of these for the kitchen: http://www.endon.co.uk/products/product ... 085-harper

I've seen that style regularly, didn't realise it was made by the same manufacturer.

I think I'm just going to order one of the twin 2ft £29.99 ones, I guess if it's crap I can return or resell it. I'll get some pics up here for anyone interested once it arrives.

I had 100% fluorescent battens all over my house in 1995, (all Thorn PPs with the Atlas gear), I even had an 8foot twin in the living room!! , the wife wasn`t a bit interested either, just as long as she could flip a switch and the room lit up!

However, in the end it was ME that got fed up of them!!, (funny how you fall out of favour with things as your taste`s change as you get older)??
Fluorescent lights were the very exact thing that got me interested in lighting in the first place, the 5 foot GEC Europa in my mums kitchen fascinated me as a kid, sadly though, now at 45 I find battens and tubes hideous for home lighting, big long unsightly bits of steel bolted to ceilings, and the `cold` feeling of UV discharges.

On a lighter note though, I did save and restore our families Europa, (when mum had halogen spots fitted some years ago), and is now safely in my collection , which is a good thing as my mum and dad are about to sell up to move to Norwich after 50 odd years living in that house!

Well the wife has said she likes it, so I am definitely ordering one. If it's good I'll probably get a few more and a box or two of quality 930 tubes.

@AngryHorse, what tubes did you use in the vintage battens? Halophosphate? I know they make things look wierd. I've recently upgraded a friend's kitchen fluorescent from 535 to 835 and the improvement is quite noticeable (not that they seemed to notice any difference )! As much as I love an 8-footer in the garage, I'm not keen on fitting long battens everywhere in the house either, hence these twin 2ft T5 seem appealing, same or more lumens in a smaller package with a choice of using HO or HE tubes

I bought a few Philips 840s and 830s, but most were standard white, the Europa had a Thorn 3500 halo tube in back in the 80s, but when it died it got fitted with a Wotan, which it ran until it was taken down in the 90s, when my folks changed to 10watt halogen capsule lamps on fancy fittings.
I still have the Wotan tube in it. , but what made me remove all my battens was when Philips`s electronic PL-T, tripple turn CFLs came out.
They were a bit expensive at first, so I just bought 2 for the kitchen, (the 23watt versions), I took my, (then), RING twin surface mounts down and just fitted standard BC battens with the PL-Ts in, nothing fancy, but I was really impressed with the new tri-phosphor 827 colour which made the room look warmer with better colour rendering from them.
I was hooked on CFL from then on, changing all lights in the house to a mixture of Philips, GE and Osram CFLs.

I nearly got one of these for the kitchen: http://www.endon.co.uk/products/product ... 085-harper

I really like that one (and want one now .lol. )
Would never spend that much on *any* fitting though
seems like it might be a bit of a glarebomb though? but with a dimmable ballast it'd be great.

I'd eventually like to find some sorta modern/decorative 1x F14T5 fittings to replace the 2x 2-foot T8/T12 I built & put in the hallway years ago...

You can get then a great deal cheaper.