No down lights in bedrooms. A central pendant fitting with LED bulb, or a central fan with light. Then bedside table lamps. lounge and living spaces- depends on the size of the rooms. In my opinion there is nothing worse than a runway of lights in the ceiling. A central pendant, or two matching pendants, if a long room, always looks the best, in an older home. You could then bring in floor light stands, that will also add to the character of the space. Or a trio of lights in the corner of the room, if space is available. An abundance of down lights, in my opinion, would not look the best. Remember for energy efficiency use LED bulbs.

Beacon and Bunnings are the Woolworths of lighting. Readily accessible, OK quality, reasonably priced, and very popular for these reasons. Check out the website for TecLed, who are LED specialists. They have thousands of specialist LED light fittings, better quality than Beacon or Bunnings, a good website, higher prices, and a limited number of showrooms. As with many things for your home you often get what you pay for... https://www.tecled.com.au/ Best of luck, Dr Retro Dr Retro House Calls/Dr Retro Virtual Visits

I'm wondering if anyone has experience in installing track lighting in a residential home. We are building and have decided not to punch holes into our ceiling (and so our insulation), so now we're looking at interesting lighting options. In the family/dining/kitchen area we are keen on track lighting, but this ceiling slopes from 2.8m at the windows to 4.1m over the kitchen. We have established that we need to be cost efficient and we don't want a dark room. We also have a few pieces of art that we would like to highlight with spotlights. So we don't want all the lights to come on from a single switch. We hear of single, double and triple tracks, but not sure if these work exactly as it sounds like they should. From our initial investigations, it sounds like we could meet most of our lighting needs with a peripheral (U shaped) track (or 2), a pendant light over the kitchen island bench and another over the dining table. We are wondering if anyone has experience doing similar and found particularly good (but cost efficient... because, frankly, we are close to retirement, this is our retirement home and our funds have been absolutely hammered of late) suppliers and/or advice. The pic below is roughly 9m x 5.5m dining and family area. At present we are thinking of a the attached pictures for firstly the kitchen island bench and then a U or T shaped ceiling level track (no hanging track, despite ceiling height differences) - but not in the kitchen, as we have under cupboard lighting where needed. Many thanks, in anticipation.

yes painting the dark area a dark colour. lacks natural light and want it to feel cozy in front of the fire. thanks for the suggestion. (I know it's hard to tell the colours from the photo) the door and trim are one colour which is a cream. I dont want the door to be a completely different colour, either want to leave it cream or paint it the same as the wall so it's all the same colour.