Customer project 16 - Bathroom Coving Lighting

This is the effect described in Project 4 - creating mood lighting through small lights spaced along the coving around a room. This was part of a major refurbishment of a bathroom, and was just one of three separate fibre optic lighting schemes illuminated by a single halogen light source.

The basic methodology is simple enough: holes are drilled in the coving at the preferred spacing (chiefly a matter of taste) and the fibres pushed through from the back of the coving. Each fibre is cut to a length sufficient for it to run along the back of the section of coving, through a hole in the ceiling to a light source located in the attic above. The profile of the coving is such that there is a void at the back with ample space to contain the fibre runs.


A small cupboard was sacrificed to create more space in the bathroom.

As part of the project, the original coving was removed and new coving purchased. In the photo below, project co-ordinator Janet is marking up the sections of coving prior to cutting them to the required lengths.


The new sections of coving are measured and marked for cutting to size.

The next step was to drill 1mm holes in a row along the coving - in this case at 5 cm centres. The 1mm optical fibre was then pushed through these holes from the back and left to protrude a few centimetres.


1mm holes are drilled at 5cm centres along each section of coving.

The individual fibres were stapled in place at the back to ensure that they ran in a neat bundle or harness in the void between the wall and coving. This was a heavy duty stapler and proved a bit too aggressive for the fibres until a technique was worked out to fire the staples just above the surface of the coving so as not to pinch the fibre too tightly.You can see here that the back of this section of coving has been marked with an identifying letter "A" to ensure it goes in the right place when the time comes to fix it to the wall.

The optical fibres are stapled in place to ensure a neat fit behind the coving.

Once all of the fibres in a particular section were in place, the fibres were gathered in a neat coil, ready for installation. Holes were drilled in the ceiling to correspond to the end of each coving section, in order to allow the fibre bundles to pass through into the attic.


This section of coving is ready for installation, with its optical fibres in a neatly coiled bundle.


Holes are drilled in the ceiling to allow the optical fibres to pass through to the attic above.


Continue to page 2 - final installation and completed photos.

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