Lights and Ceiling Fan

Ceiling Fan

I have a ceiling fan in my living room. Some people including IDs view these as old-fashioned and frown on them, however I didn't want to have to run the air conditioner for my whole apartment much, especially since my apartment is pretty breezy. My utility bills also seem to be ever increasing..

The ceiling fan is a functional item that I just want it to do its job quietly in the background. It is not a fashion statement nor a design piece. For a simple flat-blade ceiling fan you can choose to get what I got, which is a Relite Rapid 3-bladed fan. Relite is a well-established but fairly no-frills brand, recommended by my previous ID (from 10 years ago) who had told me these were popular in landed households. The fan cost me only $90, which I purchased cash and carry from an old fan and lighting specialty shop called Tai Yong Electric in Jalan Besar. Surprisingly it cost less at the shop than if I were to buy direct from Relite on their website (www.relitespecialty.com). As I have a high ceiling I also needed to buy an additional longer pipe to hook up the fan to.

Relite Rapid flat 3-bladed fan

There is really no need for the more fancy KDK fans I feel, which can be expensive. Those I saw cost over $200, and came with unnecessary remote controls. Design-wise they also had short and squat blades and came emblazoned with a large KDK logo in the middle.

Lights

Energy-saving LED lights are all the rage now. They don't need to be changed - I vaguely remember the shop boss mentioning a life span of up to 60,000 hours, compared to the old incandescent light bulb which typically lasts 1,500 hours. They are also super energy-saving, using a fraction of the energy incandescent bulbs use. This sealed the deal for me as any way I can lower my electricity bills is always a winner, and I ended up changing as many of my older lights (including some halogen lights) to LED lights as I could afford. 

I got these downlights for my ceiling from Aurora Image Lighting in Geylang, a shop which Benny took me to. It is close to the famous Ban Mian at a coffee shop in Lorong 32. 

The shop boss was a nice guy, and I spent quite a bit of time in the shop looking at lights, switching them on and off while he explained the ins and outs of lighting to me. I spent a total of S$2500 on lighting in the end, which is more than what I thought I would spend though. This was early in the whole project process however and I did not do any prep work beforehand, so wasn't prepared and didn't have any idea how much lighting would cost.

You can opt for round or square -framed downlights, and pay more for the design with the halo lighting effect (I didn't).

LED downlights

   

Normal

With "halo" effect