Planning Electrical Items In Your Lounge Or Dining Room

We've put together this short blog post to help with planning electrical items in your lounge or dining room when using our online rewire calculator.

Sockets

When planning positions for electrical socket outlets in your reception rooms consider covering most corners of a room, typical this would be 3-4 dependent on the shape of a room and the position of doorways, try not to position sockets within 1.2m of a door way as these can become trip hazards when appliances and electrical items are left plugged in.

Behind TV’s, sound systems and entertainment centre's may require a additional double socket to reduce the risk of over loading multiple extension leads. Consider the position and location of seating and sofa’s for table or floor lamps and also thing about where you might charge a mobile phone or electronic device these sockets could also be upgraded to USB socket outlets. An easily accessible socket will also be useful for vacuum cleaners and other general electrical items.

TV Wall Mounting

If you are planning to mount your TV on your wall you may wish to add a high level socket and TV point for this, this will get rid of unsightly cables and give you lounge a cleaner look. We typically mount high-level tv socks around 1800mm from the floor level.

TV/ Satellite and Telephone Broadband Points

You may wish to install new TV or Satellite cables in your lounger or dining room, there are a number of option for where and how we run your cables to your aerial or satellite point. We would always do our best to run cables on the internal walls hidden behind plaster work so we don't have to run unsightly cables on the external walls of the property.

Lighting

There are lots of options when it comes to choosing your lighting in your reception rooms but they generally fall into 3 categories, Lighting pendants also known as centre lights, Wall lights and downlight. You can choose either one or all 3 options, the more options you have to more versatile the lighting will be for setting the mood. Quantities depend on size and shape of rooms, typical spacing for down lights is between 1.2 & 2m for down lights in uniformed rows but it is worth mentioning that down lights were not designed to be installed in uniformed roots and configurations but instead to be placed where lighting is required, for example in alcoves, recesses above artwork or lighting up feature walls.

Switches

The light switches for reception rooms are usually located by entrances and door ways to lounge and dining rooms. When quantifying the amount of switches required, make sure you consider a second (2 way) switch if the room has more than 1 entrance/ exit. You also may wish to add additional switches if you want to set moods in the rooms for example, if in your lounge you have a centre pendant and a down light in the alcoves either side of the fireplace, you may wish to switch these separately to one another (see images below).

Watch Our Video For Help Planning Electrical Items In Your Lounge Or Dining Room