The Galaxy Star Ceiling

Rich in detail, and highly textured, the Galaxy with its sculpted constellation graphics will be the focal point of any room where it is installed.

This fantastic new product is available now direct from Starscape. Order on line or by phone. For more information visit the Galaxy link under star ceilings main navigation bar or click here.

 

 

Project 5: Illuminated glass tiles


Here is an idea for a dramatic bathroom or kitchen lighting project which takes advantage of fibre optics’ capability to work safely in wet areas. We feel this would work really well in a shower enclosure or sauna. Glass tiles are increasingly popular as a way of providing a feature or accent in a ceramic tile décor, and we’ve taken advantage of their translucency to come up with a way of permanently integrating lights into a tiled wall.

The concept is simplicity itself – the optic fibres are simply butted up to the edge of the glass tile – and installation is straightforward too.
Materials and components used in our concept testing project.
All you need is the basic set of components and tools which you’d need for a standard tiling job, along with an appropriate lightsource and fibre optic harness from our range of DIY kits. In most instances, a customised kit will probably be the best solution for this type of job, so we’ll work with you to calculate how much fibre you need.
This will depend on the size of the tiled area and how close it is to wherever you plan to put the lightsource – this could be in the attic above or in an airing cupboard for instance.

The first decision you’ll have to make is whether the fibres are going to run behind the tiles or whether they will go through the wall. If you’ve got a stud wall and can drop the fibres down within the cavity from the attic above then the fibres illuminating each glass tile can emerge from a hole in the wall directly behind the tile.

It’s more likely, however, that you’ll have to run the fibres behind the tiles so that they are embedded in the tile adhesive.
This special tile has a cut-out to accommodate a correspondingly-shaped glass insert. Tile makers also produce oblong glass tiles for use in borders.
The most challenging part of the project is simply getting your measurements right. The tiles where the fibres will shine have to be positioned first, so you need to ensure that you’ve worked out exactly where they’ll need to go. That way, when the plain tiles are added there’ll be a neat fit with exactly the right gap between each tile. This isn’t rocket science, but you need to get it right for the best effect.
Since we want the fibre ends to but up against the edges of the glass tile we’ve used a little tile saw to cut angled grooves in the tile with the cut-out.
Grooves are filed into the back of the tile to accommodate the optical fibres, so that they can butt up against the side of the glass tile.
The fibre is laid in the groove and stuck with your adhesive of choice – we generally use a hot melt glue gun, but you can use silicone or another adhesive (not superglue, since it doesn’t work well with fibre optics). Don’t use too much adhesive, since you want the tile to be flush with the surrounding ones.
Once again, the trusty glue gun is used to achieve an instant fix. Silicone might be better in practice.
The fibre should extend just far enough so that it will butt up against the side of the glass tile once that is in position.

In this demonstration we’ve used just six 1mm fibres – three each on two opposite sides of the glass tile. To increase the amount of illumination you’d simply add more fibres – you could have fibres on all four sides if you wanted.
We used three fibres on each of two opposite sides. This is just a question of taste and trial and error.
Our glass tile is 3 cm square, which means we’ve used 1 fibre per cm length, but this is entirely a matter of taste and trial and error. We’ve also used a standard 75 watt lightsource, but if your budget permits, you can use a brighter lightsource. However, this is essentially an accent or mood lighting project, so achieving a really bright light is not the real aim here.
Take care when placing the glass tile in position to avoid getting grout between the fibre end and the edge of the tile. This is where having cut the fibre to an exact length will pay off. So, it’s a good idea to have the lightsource switched on while you do this job so that you can spot immediately if any grout does creep in between the fibre end and tile.
The completed demonstration patch of tiles. Notice how as the tile changes colour, the colour of the fibres to the left changes too, demonstrating the slight light leakage you get in all optical fibres.
The demonstration patch of tiles with the single illuminated glass tile. As the colour wheel in the lightsource rotates, the light shining in the glass tile will cycle through yellow, green, red, purple, blue and white. To stay with white light simply remove the colour wheel, but the effect is nicer with the colour transition. As always, fibre optics are hard to photograph, and this does not really show the effect very well - it's brighter in real life.



Illuminated Glass tile update - May 2005
A long glass "border" tile is illuminated by a series of 1mm optical fibres butted up against each of its long sides.

At the BBC Good Homes Show at the NEC in May this year we demonstrated a number of illuminated tile ideas. Two were simply variations of the project described above, with fibres laid under conventional tiles and then butted up against glass tiles. One of these was a wall tile display, with a long glass "border" tile lit up by evenly-spaced 1mm optical fibres.


The second demonstration was of floor tiles with 50mm square glass tiles set at the junction of the large ceramic tiles. For ease of installation we used bundled 0.25 mm fibres (64 fibres to each sheathed bundle). Using the thicker bundled fibre meant we could produce good levels of illumination with just two "fibres", but it was necessary to cut deeper grooves in the surrounding ceramic tiles in order to accommodate the larger diameter.

Glowing floor tiles.


The finished effect was very pleasing, and would be suitable for kitchen, bathroom, conservatory, patio etc.

Since the illuminated tile can be far removed from the lightsource there is no electrical hazard, and there's no question of the "light" in the tile failing. The advantages over conventional halogen fixings or LEDs are obvious.


The third demonstration project consisted simply of bare fibre ends shining out of the grouted gaps between ceramic mosaic tiles. This is incredibly easy to do and is a simple way of adding a bit of interest to any tiled surface. It will liven up a kitchen or bathroom splashback, or could even be used to create a romantic ambience in a shower enclosure! Just how dramatic the effect is depends on the fibre density. Best bet is probably to go for a high density during installation - if the results are a bit overpowering it's easy enough to detach some fibres from the lightsource end of the "harness" so that they are not illuminated.

Reasonably high density of bare fibre ends shining out from mosaic wall tile display.


These three photos show the tiles illuminated with white light, but of course with the colour wheel fitted to the lightsource the option of colour change effects is also available.
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Star Cloths

 

End glow fibres