Cabinet Lighting
Dames is a retail store in the heart of Nelson City, they specialise in quality garments and accessories for the discerning woman.
Many of their jewellery pieces are displayed in glass tier cabinets. These cabinets had no lighting other than a 50W Halogen down-light in the very top. You will see from the photos that each shelf blocks the light going to the shelf underneath.
The original lighting only lit the very top shelf leaving the remaining 3-4 shelves in the dark. This is not ideal for a display case!
We were asked by Stephanie Millar Lighting design if we could come up with a solution to provide lighting to each shelf.
Beth Thorpe the owner of dames had made several enquires to local electricians, cabinet makers and even suppliers of the glass cabinets to see whether they could offer a cost effective solution to light each shelf. The answers that came back were a combination of, to hard, to expensive or cant be done.
Switch Lighting offered Beth a couple of options and she chose to go with a custom designed light. We designed a unit to be mounted to the underside of each shelf and discretely run the wiring along the internal framework.
As you can see from the photos the results are fantastic, Beth is very happy with her new cabinet lighting. She had the following to say:
"We have several glass display cabinets, which were very dark - the only lighting was a central top light, which was not adequate. Enquiries to several glass cabinet suppliers brought the reply that it is virtually impossible to fit lights after the cabinet was built. An electrician came up with a cumbersome option which was too expensive to even consider.
We are therefore delighted with the results that Switch Lighting have achieved - our cabinets look fantastic; the light reflects off the jewellery creating much more effective merchandising. The work was done in-store, with minimal disruption to business.
There are 3 cabinets in total, each cabinet was originally fitted with 1x 50W Halogen down-light on the top. The issues with this light were: only provided light to the top shelf and it was extremely hot and there was a risk of fire with placing items on top of the cabinets.
So the total lighting energy was 150W for the 3 cabinets and only 23% of the shelving was being lit up!
The new system has a total energy consumption for the 3 cabinets of only 39W, (that's less than just one of the old lights alone!) and it illuminates 100% of the shelving. We chose to use a cold white light as this brings out the shine and makes the jewellery glisten.
