fitting down lights in a dinning room

[xraanswerban]

hello there, in my dinning room I have a pendent light fitting, I want to put in a secondary ceiling about eight inches lower and fit 240volt down lights, my question is can I to controle them with a dimmer switch, and how many lights can I fit from that switch. thank you for any replies. Ray.

[wildwood]

It all depends on what type of bulbs/lights you're going to use. The traditional spotlight bulbs emit a lot of heat and use a lot of power. I don't like dimmers but there are some available now that can be used with energy bulbs, cheap to run and you could fit more lights than you'd ever want.
You could also consider halogen lights. You can run multiple bulbs of one transformer. If you use enough of them you'll get well spread light without dark spots in the room. Instead of a dimmer you can put all the lights on two different circuits so the lights are controlled by two switches.

[xraanswerban]

Thank you for the information, very interesting.