Flexible optical fibres really do lend themselves to being incorporated into decorative items such as coving and skirting, allowing you to create innovative mini spotlight or colour wash effects without the hassle of wiring up conventional electrical lights. Compared to fibre optics, even the new compact LED lights are bulky and relatively inflexible.

In this series of projects we’ll demonstrate some of the ways in which you can fit fibre optics into coving, dado rails and skirting boards. However, the one thing we want to stress from the outset is that there’s no hard and fast rule governing this type of project – apart from

the rule which governs all fibre optic installations – give some thought as to the best location for your lightsource before you start your project.

Careful siting of the lightsource will always give you the best value for money from your fibre optic kit components.

We’re not using end fitting lenses in these projects since they’re unnecessary in this type of application and would only add to the cost. The fibres are bundled together to create little spots of light – the more fibres you use at each point the brighter it will be, but if you’ve got a fixed number of fibres there’ll be a direct correlation between the brightness of each light and the number of lights you can create along your length of coving/skirting.

In other words, if you start with 180 optical fibres you could have 90 clusters of two fibres, 60 clusters of 3 fibres or 30 clusters of 6 fibres. The more clusters you have, the closer you can space them – but you may prefer to have more widely spaced, but brighter, lights in your installation. This is entirely a matter of taste, and you can experiment with different effects before committing yourself to a final design.

Obviously, if money is no object you can decide what you want to do and then simply buy as much fibre as you need to achieve the desired effect.

In any case, the great thing is that you can create dozens of little lights, all powered from a single halogen bulb and with the option of colour change or twinkling effects. Do a neat job with the fibre fixing and the fibre ends will be pretty well invisible until you turn the light on.

Tools and materials

The tools you’ll need for these jobs include a saw to cut the coving etc. to length, a drill with small-diameter bits, a router – if you need to create a channel at the back to accommodate the fibre runs, nails or adhesive to fix the finished length to the wall and paint and brushes to achieve your desired painted/stained finish.

Follow the links below to the individual projects

Skirting

Dado rail (soon)

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