Preparing a structure for interior lighting ?

In the future I would like to install interior lighting in my structures.
I did some test using a grain of rice lightbulb, but the light shows through the walls ( specially on the Atlas structures ) .
Could someone please tell me how to avoid that ?
Jacques

 

I've read that painting the inside with a coat of metal enamels (Silver, gold, brass, ect.) will create a mask which light will not shine through. From what I understand, those colors include a metal powder sort of pigment instead of a dye like other colors. After a metal coat, you can then paint a black coat to eliminate reflecting.

That is just theory, I've not tried this myself.

 

i simply use black paint.

 

If the problem is limited to a smallish area where the lamp is near one wall you could just stick an extra thickness of card over that section.
If it is the 'spot' of the lamp itself that shows you could make a diffuser (like a big white lampshade) to 'diffuse' (obviously ) the light. Maybe from thin paper or tissue. Be careful to allow heat to escape though - leave holes top and bottom.

Otherwise paint as suggested above if possible, though I can imagine that may be tricky in some assembled structures.

 

I too have had success using black paint.

 

Try: glue on aluminum foil where there is show through.

 

For any structure that I'm lighting, I paint the inside of the walls black, putty any gaps between the walls and roof. If I'm also detailing the interior, I'll leave some (or all) of the windows transparent. If I'm not detailing, I'll put curtains in the windows, allowing the light to shine through, but preventing the empty interior from being visible. My "curtains" are simply assorted colors of thin paper.

 

Thank you Mark ( Watson ), Sandro, Mark ( Sheridan ), BoxcabE5, Gary, Joel and Tracy for taking some of your valuable time to reply.
It looks like the black paint is the way to go ( with eventually some metal enamels sprayed before ) , and if it's not enough, I still can add ( as suggested ) some aluminium foil , curtains or diffuser.
I didn't built the structure yet so airspraying the black paint shouldn't be too difficult.
From no on I would like to build all my structures "interior lighting" ready.
Should I go the lightbulb or the LED way ?
Any LED supplier ?

Jacques

 

LEDs are good as they have a very long life and run cool, so burying them in a building where replacing the lamps and dissipating heat may be hard is not a problem.
BUT, LEDs are usually directional - ie. the light mainly shines in one direction, whereas filament lamps throw it all round (except where the wires are). The LED specs should give the angle of the 'beam'. Narrow (eg. 40deg) is good for loco headlights, but you want wide (say 120deg or more) for general lighting. So you may need to use 2 or 3 LEDs to get the same light coverage as a filament lamp.

Also, LEDs need a DC supply and control resistor, whereas filaments can run off the AC.

If you go with filament it's a good idea to under-run them - ie. use a lower voltage than spec. - to increase their life. Eg. run 16V bulbs at 12V. Use the lowest volts you can without the light being too yellow.

BTW, it's Mike, not Mark

 

I use e.g. 12 V bulbs only with 8 V. This gives a longer life and warmer light.

Wolfgang

 

For locations that would be hard to get to once they are installed, LED lights work the best. Granted, as noted you need to run them of DC current and have a transformer inline to the LED. You can make a large power soruce, and run several LED's off one source, or have a transformer at each LED location. You can buy or make these circuits.

For most cases, normal fillament bulbs work fine. They cost much less and as several have pointed out, if you buy a high wattage bulb and then under power it the bulb will last very long.

One thing I like to do, on the whole two buildings I have built, is to use a 1/8" phone jack (headphone jack) mounted to the bottom of my building and using it as the power drop for all bulbs in that building. The male end is mounted to the bottom of the building and plugs into a female jack mounted on my foam base. No fires as of yet! I run a busse line from the jack up to a piece of styrene I have braced across the top of the building on the diagnal and then tap into busse line when I need to power a light. The diagnal styrene serves to brace the building, plus I have attached black card stock to it to divide the building and prevent "look through" when seeing it. The jack acts as a mounting post, so I only need one or two more on the bottom of the building to lock it in place on the layout. Yet, it comes out easily when needed.

Black paint works great. The better ($) the paint, the more solids in the paint mix so the greater the opacity. Aluminum foil is good for blocking heat from a light and works good where you have to mount a lamp next to a wall.

Interior design books and magazines are great places to get patterns for carpet and window curtains. Just let the wife read them before chopping them up. And on that note, be very careful-if the spouse finds out how much time you spend on model window teatments, she may force you to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond.

One last thing, mixing your light sources can add immensely to the effect on a building. Different light sources have different color temperatures. Sodium vapor lamps v. mercury lamps as an example. Using fillament lights in the rooms for general lighting, using LED's in fixtures for drectional lighting, setting a blue LED in a room to suggest a TV, stuff like that can really enhance the effect. Remember, you are modeling the light as much as you are modeling anything else.

-Mark

 

I've gotten in the habit of lining my structures with interior walls printed on card stock. This is thicker than regular computer paper, but thinner than cardboard so it goes through the printer easily. The card stock is thick enough to block light leaking through the thin plastic walls of some structure kits.

As long as I'm doing this, I print interior patterns on the walls, so looking through the windows and doors doesn't present a blank interior.



Since I've got a couple of large open doors here, I added some boxes and a figure to this model. It's a cheap, easy way to provide an interior to a structure.

 

MisterBeasley,

Nice work! Very good ideer! I will try that.

PS-anyone ever get the Buffy/Jody reference?

Mark

 

Thank you Mike Sheridan smile:,Wolfgang Dudler, Mark ( cmstpmark ) ,MisterBeasley for taking some of your valuable time to reply and to suggest additional tips.

Special thanks to MisterBeasley for the pictures, of course adding some printed brick wall texture to Kate's colonial home kit is not what I have in mind, but for sure I'll use that technique for industrial ( brewery ) structures.

Jacques

 

You are certainly a bit right. However I think LEDs tend to have quite low Vr values (not sure without diving into spec sheets), which means you could blow them if the peak volts of the AC supply are higher than Vr. (The dropper resistor won't really function on the reverse cycles of the AC as there is no current flow ... until the diode pops.)

 

Mike, you are quite right, I checked and the reverse voltage of a LED is quite low ( around 5 Volts ). So in order to avoid spreading some confusing information I edited my post.
Thank you for correcting me.

Jacques

 

For interior and exterior textures try http://www.cgtextures.com. You can down load for free.

 

Thank you Shortround for the link.
I didn't know about cgtextures. I'm working on a HO 12"X32" switching layout and some of those textures should fit nicely on the backdrop.

Jacques