Installation

Installation of the Galaxy is at its easiest in a room with an accessible attic above, but we have designed it to be as flexible as possible for use in many different situations. The stars are illuminated by an integrated low wattage LED light source in the rim of the disk. This feeds light via an optical fibre harness to the 450 stars in the star ceiling disk. (As an optional upgrade customers may have a halogen light source instead, but we recommend the LED.)


The Galaxy has four pre-drilled fixing holes in its rim, and the chief consideration for installation is to ensure that you have a load-bearing element of some sort - ceiling joist for instance - corresponding to these fixing holes.

If the fixing holes in the Galaxy rim don't match the spacing of your joists you simply need to fix solid pieces of timber to one side or another of the existing joists to increase their width so that they do correspond to the fixing points. Alternatively, lay a pair of solid (say 2 by 2 inch) pieces of timber across the joists at right angles and use long bolts or pieces of threaded rod to suspend the Galaxy.

If you're installing a Galaxy in a downstairs room, with no access above, you'll probably need to cut a hole in the plasterboard as as to get access to the joists. Since the Galaxy will hide this hole once it's in place, our advice is to cut a large enough hole to make it easy to do any required work within the ceiling void.

If you have any doubts about installing the Galaxy, please do e-mail or phone us with details of your proposed installation and we'll be glad to advise. However, we're glad to say that none of our Galaxy customers has ever come back to us with reports of any installation difficulties.

Whatever the specific circumstances of your own installation, we STRONGLY recommend the use of a plasterboard jack to raise the disk into position. A plasterboard jack should cost around £20 to hire for a day. The disk weighs around 27 kg so it makes life a lot easier if the weight is supported while you line up fixing holes etc.


Electrical installation is very easy. If the Galaxy is displacing an existing ceiling pendant light fitting simply connect that existing supply to the LED's transformer. Depending on how handy you are with a screwdriver, this should take just two or three minutes.

The Galaxy has about 450 fibre optic stars and it is possible that during shipping and installation a few of these may become disconnected. Unless these are important stars and affect the shape of a major constellation, our advice is not to worry about them. Although the stars in the Galaxy are all in their correct locations the number of stars shown is essentially arbitrary, so a few more or less does not matter.

If you do have any "missing" stars and want to repair them, you'll need to very carefully remove the plastic backing sheet and locate the loose fibre which has pulled free from its star or snapped, and then reinsert it. This may require drilling out the hole in the star with a very fine drill. This repair process is not particularly time-consuming or complicated, but since there are hundreds of fine fibres at the back of the disk it should be done very carefully.

If you have any queries about Galaxy installation please do not hesitate to e-mail us or phone 01289 388399. We’re confident we can help you to install a Galaxy in just about any location. Or, if your budget permits, we can do the installation for you.