Rather than installing the fibre optic stars in the ceiling, our customer Waqar Y wanted to put them in the canopy of his four-poster bed.

He decided to put the light source on the edge of the canopy frame, requiring fibres of up to 3 metres to achieve the desired effect.

Although the area of the star ceiling is limited, the star density is probably a bit higher than normal, and Waqar has created some nice clusters of stars.

If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see some errant loops of fibre above the canopy rail.

We’re not sure whether perhaps these were tidied up after the photo was taken, but it does raise one noteworthy point.

If the fibres were not covered by something then the light leaking from their length – the sideglow effect caused by inefficiencies in the fibre’s reflective cladding – will create a glow on the ceiling above.

There are two ways of looking at this – either as a bonus, a nice secondary effect – or as a nuisance,

in which case you need to plan for some sort of shielding layer above the fibres to hide this leaking light.

This project illustrates very well that you can have a nice star ceiling in a room without having to tackle the entire ceiling.