One of the most common mistakes that people who are looking to change the lighting in their home make is not taking into account all the different available types of fixtures, so they usually settle for the same old, mundane, generic fixtures they’ve used for the past few decades. One such example of underrated and rarely-thought-about lighting fixture are track lights. Track lights, also known as ‘rail lights’ are an extremely effective form of accent, task, and ambient lighting. They allow you to direct light in almost any form or shape in just about any room – commercial and residential. Furthermore, track lightings are very energy-efficient, easy-to-install and budget-friendly.
If you’ve decided that you want to experiment with track lightings, you need to consider what type of lighting you need. Do you need to illuminate a specific part of a room or an entire room? The answer to this question will narrow down your choices significantly, which is actually a good thing as there are so many options available nowadays.
Generally, track lighting as the main source of light works best for smaller rooms. For big rooms, on the other hand, it is good to combine it with other lighting elements. Furthermore, you can use it to illuminate commercial spaces too, such as dining rooms, retail showrooms, and meeting rooms. If you want to use it as task or accent lighting, you can do that easily. Since these are smaller fixtures, you can easily fit them wherever you want – above your work desk, or above that cool painting in your living room.
There are three track lighting systems – H, J, and L. You can interchange track lights across tracks, meaning – an H track fixture will work on any H track lighting system. There’s no advantage in using one type of system over the other, and all of them are similar in terms of performance. Worth knowing is that track lighting systems are usually controlled by the same switch. However, there are also two-circuit systems that allow you to control two groups of fixtures on a single track.
To sum it up, track lighting systems are incredibly versatile and can be utilized almost anywhere. They’re scalable so you can add or remove fixtures as you see fit. Plus, there’s a wide range of designs, so you can pick between different patterns and designs to build different layouts – grid formats, rectangles, squares, etc. Lastly, they offer diverse functionality, as you can also add spotlights, pendant lights, and many other styles as well.
