Recessed Lighting: What You Should Know

“Recessed lights are great for any room of the house, even kitchens and bathrooms.”

Recessed lights are incredibly powerful lighting solutions that install above the ceiling line. They’re thin, almost unnoticeable, and generally watertight – which makes them great for any room of the house, even kitchens and bathrooms.

Recessed lights do require some drilling, cutting and wiring work above your ceiling (this usually means within your attic). If you have direct access to your ceiling, the job is a little easier. If not however, you’ll need to work through your insulation and ceiling, and that can get challenging.

Recessed lights are incredibly powerful lighting solutions that install above the ceiling line. They’re thin, almost unnoticeable, and generally watertight – which makes them great for any room of the house, even kitchens and bathrooms.

Recessed lights do require some drilling, cutting and wiring work above your ceiling (this usually means within your attic). If you have direct access to your ceiling, the job is a little easier. If not however, you’ll need to work through your insulation and ceiling, and that can get challenging.

What’s the best use of Recessed Lighting?

Recessed light fixtures can be used in any room of the house, but there are many notable exceptions to install recessed lighting.

• The Kitchen

Recessed lights are directional and are best used for spotlighting certain areas that need more visibility. Task lighting brings a whole level of illumination to areas that may be obscured, or oddly placed. Especially consider lighting kitchen islands, countertops that are hidden under cabinets, or sinks.

• The Bathroom

Recessed lighting housings offer watertight lighting. This makes them great for lighting up shower stalls or bathtubs, especially when curtains or stained glass dim the shower.

• The Home Theater

Regardless of if you have a full blown home theater room or if you just have a T.V. on a stand, glare and poor lighting from standard light bulbs

Top 4 Reasons to Consider Recessed Lighting

Recessed ceiling lights offer an incredible amount of versatility and functionality. Here are the top 5 reasons to consider recessed lights.

1. Let There Be Light

Recessed lights are especially ideal when you want light, without any of the fixture. Flipping the switch to turn on the light becomes sort of magical when you aren’t dealing with bulky lamps or low-hanging fixtures.

2. Useful for Low Ceilings

Recessed lights sit above the ceiling line and don’t protrude from your ceiling at all. If you’re home includes low ceilings already, you may not want to install a lighting fixture that drops the ceiling line even further. If you’re on the taller side, you know this all too well.

3. Waterproof Lighting Options

As mentioned earlier, recessed lighting can be watertight. This means they’re ideal for illuminating especially steamy or even wet environments, like kitchens or bathrooms.

4. Always Stylish

Unlike chandeliers which scream, “Grandma’s house” or accent lighting which screams “corporate” recessed lighting never really goes out of style – mostly because it never really was a style. Consider that recessed lighting can serve many of the same functions as other lighting applications without ever actually seeing the light fixture.

Top 3 Reasons to Avoid Recessed Lighting

In an effort to be unbiased, we’ve compiled a top 3 reasons you may not want recessed lighting to compliment our top 3 reason for recessed lights. Consider these key points when considering your home lighting improvement.

1. They’re directional

It is possible to array recessed lighting so that it covers a wide room, but we think that directional lighting is the best purpose for recessed lights. That being said, it may take more lights to distribute illumination

2. They cannot be insulated

You may remember from science class that heat rises. Having big holes in your ceiling could be detrimental to your energy bill, especially if you don’t have a second floor (if you do have a second floor, it’s actually not a big deal). The heat buildup by the lights means that you can’t cover them within your ceiling. Keep this in mind when planning the insulation and safety needs of your home.

3. Washing the walls, not the floor

Our final bit of advice – and where most people go astray – is just this: wash the walls, not the floors. Recessed lights do best when they’re located close to walls and angled down so that the light bounces onto and off the wall. Having recessed lights in the middle of a room may bring an awkward level of lighting to a room. Always use them for spotlighting, not array lighting.