Reflecting light in a house

I was at a thrift store and picked up what turns out to be a mirror made so you can watch your baby in the back eat as you drive. I got it, though, because it's a convex curved mirror and I wanted to play with it for light reflection. (CONCAVE curves in, like a cave, CONVEX curves outward like an arch)



Oh this is NEAT!! I put it flat on a sunny table and looked to see what it reflected on the ceiling. It was not super sharp and bright, but it was huge. I put a couple of random mirrors (including a convex one) and a dvd on the table too. They all made very bright spots, but only a spot. Approximate numbers here, but an 8x10 inch mirror made a 10 x12 inch spot, the 8 x 10 inch convex one made a 3 foot by 6 foot bright area.  
(I wonder if some of the less sharp reflection might be because it's not glass, it's shatterproof plastic?)

So now I'm wondering what kind of light reflection I'd get from the round mirrors used to show what's around corners. Seems like I'd see those second hand someplace but I never have. Hm, I guess I do have at least one big blind spot mirror, today I have no sun for testing, I'll dig it up.

What I'm looking at here is bouncing light around in a house. I do not like skylights, because I believe any roof penetration is where you'll have roof leak problems first, I'm a fan of high windows that are used to let light in on a wall, then the light is bounced around and moved as needed. I have long thought that any high window ledge not doing anything else needs to be mirrored upward. Now I'm thinking convex mirrors upward might spread it all much better.

My house design has interior light tubes that work like a periscope: a hollow wooden column (that's placed so it works aesthetically in the house) with mirrored interior that goes from right in front of a clerestory window down through the floor into the basement, where the light is dispersed. Due to weight and not wanting broken glass, I have acquired a LOT of dead DVD discs that I plan to use to mirror the tubes all the way down. I have tested it, the light comes out as bright as mirrored, but it diffuses the light really nicely, makes a very nice light source.

But adding convex mirrors as a possibility makes me think. If I have a DVD tube that hits a convex mirror at the bottom to disperse it in the room, what would I get? Hmmm...
And putting convex mirrors flat on the window ledges too.....

Anyone ever done this? I'd love more data points!

I use mirrors to move light around my house, into darker areas. Its simple and effective.
Roof penetrations can be water proof, you just need to do it properly

When using any light source if you put a regular flat mirror behind it, the light will be cast away from the mirror, and the light that would have merely been absorbed by the background is now adding to the ambience of the room
We've used this technique with kerosene lamps and candles.

I seem to remember that in an old episode of Mythbusters, they tested something (from a movie maybe?) about using multiple mirrors to direct light into a dark building. They ran into the problem that the light came in, but only lit up a quite small patch of wall, until they hung a white shirt in the beam. Then, suddenly, there was light.

Eino Kenttä wrote:I seem to remember that in an old episode of Mythbusters, they tested something (from a movie maybe?) about using multiple mirrors to direct light into a dark building. They ran into the problem that the light came in, but only lit up a quite small patch of wall, until they hung a white shirt in the beam. Then, suddenly, there was light.

It scattered the light. Depending on what kind of fabric the shirt was, it could scatter quite a lot. Loose weaves don't reflect much light, tight weaves reflect a lot. If it was something like a medium to high priced men's dress shirt the tight weave on it reflected a lot. (I use that system in my heat blocking clothes, tight weaves bounce more sun off them. Men's dress shirts are cheap a thrift stores, I put holes in them for air flow, as they don't breathe well, and then they work really well to keep me cool.)

That's about what I was thinking with both the convex mirror and the DVD disks. I have used mirrors before, but the light at the end of the periscope was a square patch of brightness. The DVDs scatter light every time they reflect off each other all the way down the tube, and what comes out spreads beautifully. (As well as there's no broken glass risk, they are lighter weight, and they can be found for free.)

The convex mirror really spread it more than I expected. I hadn't experimented with them before, but I was expecting just a marginally bigger rectangle. The spread was startling.  

One of the things I have in this rental is big storm windows with crinkled tinfoil under them, that reflect the light of my houseplant grow light into the whole room. It made a world of difference in that room to have that light scattering all over it. For weird reasons I have flat tinfoil in another room, and it doesn't reflect a lot of light at all.

This all just fascinates me, it's not what a quick thought would suggest. Opens up a lot more options to think on how and why it all works, rather than just buy a product at a big box store.

Another thing I love with mirrors is they can be used to make space look more open. I saw a picture of a house that had fake arched doorways with mirrors in the space, really looked neat. I have wanted for years to play with that whole concept. I have a collection of the cheap door mirrors from the dollar stores, I'd love to make something that looks like the railing of a balcony high up on a wall with the mirrors between, and plants crawling over it all to give the room more upper depth visually.

Fiber optic cables are used to route sunlight underground..        Might consider these as well to help move the light around.      It is tricky as the sun moves and so does the angle of the light.

Sometimes being a permie and avoiding all the garbage the world wants to sell me comes back to bite me.
Peel and stick flexible mirror sheets!!
WHY did I not ever notice those before!
Whoo hoo! Watch for more weird curved light experiments!!

And I'm a crafty/sewing/building things type, wonder how many weird shapes I can try?

I've been watching ebay and thrift stores for convex mirrors, the kind you see at the end of aisle, or corner in a parking lot, to check traffic coming from the other way, had no luck.  Wonder if I can shape flexible stuff  that well? Won't be surprised if I can. Laying out curved connection sewing ideas is easy for me.

OH NEAT!!  The things I learn !!

Follow-up on the peel and stick flexible mirror...
OH WOW! That's fun!! I highly recommend trying it!
And even tiny scraps are mirrored, I'm making a pile, planning to see what happens if I add mirror to some of my jewelry...
Putting pieces inside a lamp shade amps up the lamp light!

Haven't gotten to trying it for serious light bouncing yet, will be soon.

:D

Pearl Sutton wrote:What I'm looking at here is bouncing light around in a house...

I love that you are experimenting. That makes me want to experiment, too!

Now I'm thinking about what using a bunch of "tiles"made of aluminum cans  on a ceiling would do. Or the same on walls.

Lif Strand wrote:

Now I'm thinking about what using a bunch of "tiles"made of aluminum cans  on a ceiling would do. Or the same on walls.

The other things I like are carefully crumpled tinfoil behind glass, smooth foil with no glass, and dead CD and DVD disks. The DVDs change the scatter pattern a lot and soften the glare, and change the color.
The crumpled foil really spreads light around. Smooth foil doesn't do as well (I think it gets dirty fast) but still brightens up dark corners.

Pearl Sutton wrote:
The other things I like are carefully crumpled tinfoil behind glass, smooth foil with no glass, and dead CD and DVD disks. The DVDs change the scatter pattern a lot and soften the glare, and change the color.
The crumpled foil really spreads light around. Smooth foil doesn't do as well (I think it gets dirty fast) but still brightens up dark corners.

I would think that crumpled foil would work the way you are describing because it has many surfaces to reflect kind of like the DVD discs do. Now I'm thinking about some kind of a combination of aluminum can tiles with DVD discs. A work of art rather than merely functional.

this could maybe be its own topic but related to what Mart Hale brought up...
i remember reading or watching a video on greenhouses in very cold climates and the one person said dont even bother with a greenhouse just grow with lights 20 feet underground
i was thinking it would be cool to have a space 20 feet underground and a parabolic reflector and have fiber optic cables at the focal point which bring the light down to the underground space
the reflector could be set up to track the sun like greenpowerscience had his solar cooker track the sun

another thing with that is you could make the collector bigger than the grow space in a situation where the sun is obscured so as to have full light in a dimmed world in the case of a large volcanic eruption/impact/explosion

One of the most effective methods to get lots of sunlight into the house that I've personally experienced, is to use high gloss paint (cream white is my favourite colour for this) on the window sill and around the interior of the window.
I lived on the thrid floor next to a canal in Amsterdam, and had the sunlight that reflected from the canal glittering in my living room, reflected by the ceiling above the window!

I love light! I already have mirrors at both sides of the window (just ordinary old closet-door mirrors) for years. But now I read some things here that make me want to experiment...
... that aluminium foil I rarely use, I can try to reflect the light in the corner of the room with it! That corner is where I like to sit (on my couch), but the lamp there doesn't give as much light as I would like (doing textile crafts).

M. Phelps wrote:... the one person said dont even bother with a greenhouse just grow with lights 20 feet underground

I have read of this being done in old mines in the Sudbury, Ontario region. They were specifically growing tree seedlings for the lumber industry (I refuse to call monoculture industrial tree farms, "forests"). It was climate stable and there wasn't a bug problem!

The idea of using solar collectors and fiber optic cables makes sense to me, as I don't think we really appreciate some of the nuances of real sunlight. It's the difference between "NPK  fertilizer" which hurts the biome, vs homemade compost tea. To make lights "more efficient", much of the range has been removed and focus is on the "essential to work" light wavelengths. Just because we don't know what goodness comes from the non-visible spectrum, doesn't mean it isn't important?

Lif Strand wrote:

I would think that crumpled foil would work the way you are describing because it has many surfaces to reflect kind of like the DVD discs do. Now I'm thinking about some kind of a combination of aluminum can tiles with DVD discs. A work of art rather than merely functional.

My house design has homemade light tubes lined with foil under DVDs in a shingle pattern. The test I did on it worked well. I want light weight and not a problem if things come loose and fall. The tubes will open for maintenance.

My last house I made a light well with mirror tiles and when a bad storm brought down one mirror onto a concrete floor from 9 foot 6 up.... I never want to deal with that again. Light weight, no shattering!

Jay Angler wrote:
The idea of using solar collectors and fiber optic cables makes sense to me, as I don't think we really appreciate some of the nuances of real sunlight. It's the difference between "NPK  fertilizer" which hurts the biome, vs homemade compost tea. To make lights "more efficient", much of the range has been removed and focus is on the "essential to work" light wavelengths. Just because we don't know what goodness comes from the non-visible spectrum, doesn't mean it isn't important?

I think that DVDs or aluminum foil or whatever "found" reflective materials we might use would be great for bouncing light from the non-visible spectrum, but I know that glass (and many plastics) block at least the UVB rays needed for vitamin D production in humans. Metal bounces UVB rays better than regular mirrors due to the glass surfaces of mirrors. I'm guessing that this would be true of other non-visible spectrum lighting.

If the important thing is getting full-spectrum light into a building, then it has to somehow not have to go through glass or most plastics.  Google says good quality plastic greenhouse panels (clear polyethylene or polycarbonate) transmit the entire full light spectrum best, so to me the setup would be a sunroom attached to a building, with clear polyethylene or polycarbonate greenhouse panels. Then light that is bounced off of metal surfaces deeper into the house or other structure would be healthier for humans, critters, and plants.