Magnetic Track Light and No Central Light, What’s the difference?
by Penglight | Date: 9th Nov 2024
As we delve into lighting design choices, the choice between conventional central lighting and no central lighting becomes a pivotal exploration of how illumination can define and enhance a space’s atmosphere and functionality. When using magnetic track lights to fulfill no central lighting design, a unique blend of versatility and focused lighting solutions emerges, revolutionizing the way we approach lighting in modern spaces.
In this post, we will delve deeper into the nuances of magnetic track lights and explore how their application in a No central lighting setup can transform the ambiance and functionality of a room, offering a fresh perspective on contemporary lighting solutions.
What is No Central Light?
What is a ‘No Central Light’ design? Just compare it with its ‘opposite’ (traditional central light) and you’ll understand. The difference between them is also very simple, before we explain, just answer one question: Where does the light come from?
We know that the most important mission of a lamp is to emit light and provide illumination at night. In traditional lighting with a central light, brightness is mainly provided by the ‘central light source’ such as a ceiling light or a pendant light. However, in a ‘No Central Light’ design, light is provided by various ‘scattered light sources’ such as spotlights, downlights, track lights, linear lights, etc., dispersed throughout the space together.
From the reflected ceiling plan, No Central Light design is with several different light sources installed at different positions of the space, rather than only installing one light in the center of the ceiling.
From the perspective of spatial elevation, you will find that the light source of a central light usually only comes from the ceiling.
While the concept of a ‘No Central Light’ is: the light source could come from the ceiling, walls, floor, cabinets… and any other place in the space. By using lights from all directions, it creates layered, atmospheric, and textured light.
Why No Central Light is Popular?
Not everything popular is suitable for everyone, but ‘No Central Light’ is definitely a lighting method that better fits the lifestyle habits of modern people! Compared to traditional central lighting, there are too many advantages to ‘No Central Light’:
- No Central Light: A More Scientific Use of Light, Avoiding Traditional Lighting Design Flaws
Traditional central lighting is all about ‘as long as it’s bright enough’, while ‘No Central Light’ is about ‘lighting where it’s needed’ — precise and appropriately bright light appears where it is needed, which is the fundamental difference in lighting philosophy.
For example, in a traditional restaurant relying on ceiling lights or pendant lights for illumination, these lights are generally diffuse light sources. To ensure that the tabletop is bright enough, the brightness of the ceiling light must be sufficiently high. Often, due to the wrong choice of lights, two awkward situations arise: a. the overhead light is too bright and glaring; b. to avoid glare, the light is not bright enough or there are shadows.
The approach of ‘No Central Light’ may involve using grid lights or spotlights to focus light on the tabletop. With lower wattage, it can ensure a brightly lit table, enhancing the presentation of dishes, while avoiding the issue of excessive pressure from overhead lighting.
Here’s another example: in a traditional bedroom, ceiling lights or spotlights are used as the main light source. When a person lies in bed, it is challenging to avoid the glare of the light. In contrast, a ‘No Central Light’ design disperses the light sources around the bed, preventing glare and providing ambient lighting. Bedside lamps are responsible for bedtime reading or browsing on a phone, while perhaps linear lights enhance the ambiance, each function clearly defined and separated.
- No Central Light: Creating a Home with Atmosphere and Emotion
For many families, their lighting concept still revolves around whether it’s ‘bright enough’, despite the fact that it has been over 200 years since Edison invented the light bulb. It’s hard to imagine that modern lighting design concepts haven’t evolved much.
The advent of the ‘No Central Light’ era signifies a breakthrough in traditional lighting concepts: Illumination is just the most basic aspect; lighting should also make a space atmospheric, emotional, and textured, matching people’s ideal visions of a beautiful home.
The places that should be bright are bright, while those that shouldn’t are kept subtle, creating layered and atmospheric lighting.
Through a layered lighting layout, spatial lighting fluctuates, changes, and even evokes emotions. When alone at home, dim and ambiguous lighting creates a quiet immersive atmosphere, where solitude feels enveloping and healing; when hosting family and friends, in the same space, the lighting becomes bright and cheerful, with fewer personalized emotions, adding brightness and color to moments of togetherness.
No Central Light can achieve different scenario modes to meet different functional requirements:
Whether in terms of practical functionality or emotional needs, ‘No Central Light’ is a complete and overwhelming dimensional strike against traditional central lighting. This is also one of the reasons why ‘No Central Light’ design has quickly gained popularity.
How to do No Central Light design?
The light sources of ‘No Central Light’ may seem abundant, but can be simplified into three main categories: spotlights, track lights, and linear lights. By considering the characteristics and advantages of different light sources, you can create the most suitable ‘No Central Light’ solution for your home.
- LED Spot Lights
Spotlights are the most common light sources for ‘No Central Light’. Each individual light source is relatively small, and through the combination of multiple spot lights, they provide a dispersed and uniform lighting layout, essentially breaking down the traditional single concentrated light source.
They can be used for general ambient lighting throughout a space, as well as for highlighting specific areas like washing walls or illuminating artwork. Just using spotlights alone can fulfill the No-Central-Lighting needs of an entire space. The advantage is that they offer good value for the quality of light produced, but the downside is that installation can be relatively complex, requiring each light source to be matched with a corresponding electrical connection, which increases the wiring point, makes it more complex.
2. Magnetic Track Light
Track lights, as the name suggests, are lighting solutions based on a track where multiple light sources can be installed. Magnetic track lights, which fix the light sources magnetically, are currently a popular and user-friendly ‘No Central Light’ design. They come in embedded and surface-mounted styles, allowing for installation without the need for a suspended ceiling.
Compared to spotlights, the advantages of track lights are flexibility, customization, and easy installation, making them very user-friendly for those new to interior design. Only one electrical connection is needed for a track, reducing construction complexity and installation costs. In simple terms, if you want to install three spotlights on the ceiling, you would need to create three electrical connections. However, with magnetic track lights, you only need to create one electrical connection and then install three spotlight modules on the track. Different light sources can be attached to the track, and these light modules can be freely moved, allowing for ongoing adjustments and changes to the lighting layout after moving in.
3. LED Linear Lights
Linear lights, also known as light strips, are typically installed in a recessed manner, such as embedded in partial ceiling drops, within curtain boxes, under TV cabinets, or along bedside feature walls. They offer soft, warm, non-glaring premium lighting. They can also be integrated with wall surfaces, furniture designs, and more, serving both lighting and decorative purposes to add creativity and personality to the overall design.
LED linear lights are a beauty enhancer, one major advantage is that they can instantly elevate the style and sophistication of a home, making designers fond of using linear lights to enhance the space’s ambiance. Linear lights are also atmospheric tools; their even and soft lighting can create a warm and soothing atmosphere in the home, making them truly worth having!
3 Things to Consider before Installing Magnetic Track Light
If you like the No Central Light effect and decide to use magnetic track light to fulfill this design, there are 3 things that you need to take into consideration:
- Where to hide the transformer?
- How to lay out the track rail? How long does it need to be?
- Which lights to choose? How many lights are enough to provide adequate brightness?
Let’s answer them all!
- Where to hide the transformer?
Why do you need a transformer? Because the household voltage is 220V or 120V high voltage electricity. To ensure that magnetic track lights are safe to touch by hand without risk, they are usually designed to operate at 24V or 48V, requiring a transformer for safety protection. The transformers for magnetic track lights typically look like this in the market.
It’s obvious that the designers don’t want the transformer to be exposed, so it needs to be hidden. Where is the best place to hide it? Typically, the first choice is within the existing semi-suspended ceiling, such as near the central air conditioning maintenance opening or within sections of the ceiling where light strips are installed, for easier maintenance in case of issues. Curtain boxes and above air conditioner units are also good places to conceal the transformer. You should find a suitable hiding spot based on your own home’s specific layout.
You might also wonder: how many transformers are needed?
Transformers usually have a rated power of 100W or more, which means that as long as the total wattage of the light sources on the track controlled by a single transformer does not exceed 100W, it is sufficient. Typically, magnetic lights are in wattages of 3/5/7 watts, so you can install as many as you need.
Try to design the transformers upstream of all tracks, so you only need to buy one transformer. If the living room and bedroom have separate track systems and cannot be connected to a single upstream transformer, then you will need to prepare a transformer for each track system.
You might also ask: Are there no transformers that can be exposed?
There are. On the market, some transformers look identical to the track itself, like the below photo:
You can directly install it at one end of the track. However, these transformers have fixed widths and heights, so they may not perfectly match all tracks. For example, a transformer with a width of 40mm won’t perfectly fit a 25mm mini track. Some transformers may have the same width as the track, but there could be differences in height, which means they can still be used but might not be a perfect match. Therefore, when choosing an external transformer, pay attention to the detailed dimensions or consult with Penglight.
- How to lay out the track rail?
Taking the living room as an example, common track layouts include horizontal layouts like single-line and double-line configurations, vertical layouts like I shape and I I shape, as well as L-shaped, U-shaped, and square layouts.
The single-line and double-line layouts are the most commonly used, where the track runs parallel to the direction of the sofa and TV, with the track’s presence being less pronounced.
Single-line layout is typically positioned above the sofa, illuminating the sofa’s background wall. The double-line layout consists of one track lighting up the sofa’s background wall and another illuminating the TV’s background wall.
These two types can meet the basic lighting needs of the entire living room. Additionally, they can be used to light up areas like the coffee table using grid strips, illuminate the TV background wall with spotlights, and fulfill specific localized lighting requirements.
The I type and I I type layouts are not as aesthetically pleasing as they run through the entire living room (opting for white tracks can reduce their visibility, but customizations may be needed), and they do not offer the wall washing effect achievable with the single-line layout, resulting in a lower usage frequency.
However, these two types also have their advantages: they illuminate the central area of activity more extensively, providing concentrated and even lighting in the central zone. This feature is particularly suitable for larger living spaces.
The L-shaped, U-shaped, and square layouts offer greater flexibility and can illuminate larger areas. Moreover, since the tracks are interconnected, only one electrical connection is required, unlike the double-line layout which needs two connections.
These layouts are well-suited for situations where there are decorative paintings on one side of the living room wall or in horizontal spaces where the living and dining areas are combined.
- How long does magnetic track rail need to be?
The length of the track is generally determined by the number of lights needed. For example, if you require 4 magnetic spotlights for the TV background wall, spaced 50cm apart, a 2-meter track would suffice. For a more aesthetically pleasing look, it is recommended to leave about 0.5 meters of space at each end, that it’s extending the track to 3 meters.
Of course, due to their high flexibility, magnetic track lights do not necessarily require an even or symmetrical distribution of light sources. They can be freely arranged, and in such cases, the length is determined based on personal preferences.
It is worth noting that most suppliers in the market typically price tracks based on one meter. If the length is not a whole meter, it may need to be cut, but the pricing is still based on one meter. Therefore, we recommend planning your track lighting system in whole meters to ensure cost-effective sourcing.
- Which lights to choose? How many lights are enough to provide adequate brightness?
If you want to evenly illuminate a space for general lighting, choose floodlights. For lighting up coffee tables or dining table surfaces, opt for recessed grid lights. For a good wall-washing effect, choose polarized lights. For lights that can be freely adjusted for angles, choose spotlights or square box lights.
The smaller the beam angle, the more focused the light; the larger the angle, the wider the light coverage. If you find it troublesome, just go for the versatile 24° beam angle.
For color temperature, typically 3000K-4000K is recommended. The higher the number, the whiter the light; the lower the number, the warmer the light, depending on personal preference. Generally, it is suggested to choose 3500-4000K for the living room and 3000-3500K for the bedroom.
A color rendering index (CRI) greater than 80 is usually sufficient, while over 90 is excellent.
In terms of brightness, for typical home lighting design, lighting can be calculated based on approximately 3 watts per square meter for the living room, 2 watts per square meter for the bedroom, and 5 watts per square meter for the kitchen to determine the total wattage, which can then be distributed among different light sources.
For example, in a 20 square meter living room, the total brightness should be around 60 watts; for a 10 square meter bedroom, a total of 20 watts would be sufficient.
About Penglight
Penglight is a professional sourcing and consulting company, we offer one-stop lighting solutions for commercial and residential projects. Whether you’re building homes, houses, villas, apartments, hotels, condos, dormitories, offices, etc, or you’re renovating an old building, if you’re looking for a lighting expert or lighting consultant, please feel free to contact us or email us at info@penglight.com.
Related Link: Why Choose No Central Light For Home?
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