The Dogs Trust has recently opened a brand new rehoming Centre located just a couple of miles from Cardiff Bay. The charity’s 22nd rehoming centre has been devised with man’s best friend’s welfare at the forefront of its design including the LED lighting solutions supplied by Luceco. The £13.5m project has created a canine oasis with three buildings and landscaped outside space for up to 210 dogs.
The new extensive facilities include kennels, veterinary suite, grooming rooms, hydrotherapy and physiotherapy units, training and exercising halls as well as offices and amenity space for visitors to the centre. 78 light and airy “sleep & run” kennels with underfloor heating were lit with Platinum Mini Downlighters, a recessed luminaire offering an efficacy up to 117 Llm/cW, with a unique swing tab design for quick and easy installation.
Platinum was also used for visitor spaces such as the Meet & Greet area, waiting room and Internal Play areas as well as Platinum Surface pendants in the main building. Providing the opportunity for creative lighting design using the same high specification luminaire where a recessed ceiling void is not available, Platinum Surface Mount can be used as a pendant with suspension wires or directly mounted onto a solid surface.
Many of the circulation areas were lit with linear recessed arrays of the Contour luminaire. The LED lighting system consists of connectable modules that can be surface mounted, suspended or recessed as at the Dogs Trust in Cardiff forming contemporary, decorative, and highly effective illumination. Contour offers over 100,000 hours operational life, making the luminaire ideal for environments with high working hours.
The outside space is designed to provide plenty of room for exercising and training the dogs as well as parking and amenity space for visitors to the centre. Guardian Pro flood lights were used for the exercise paddocks and runs and IP65 rated Atlas bulkheads were installed around the exterior of the building with Deco Bollards lighting landscaped gardens and pathways.  The perimeter roads and parking facilities were lit with Viva City Pro, a modular, slimline, performance LED street lantern offering a choice of optics and an operational working life of 100,000 hours.
The Dogs Trust goes to huge lengths to help stray and abandoned dogs and rehabilitate those dogs in need of a little extra help, and the Cardiff Rehoming Centre will be no different. With dedicated Training and Behaviour Advisors, dogs of all shapes and sizes will be offered all the help they need to find a new home – creating many bright and well-lit Happy Dog Tales!