Let there be light...

It’s been a long time coming: we now have serious lighting in our living / dining areas. This weekend I installed 16 recessed 4” cans and wired them to 3 new ASPIRE dimmer switches. It was a lot of work, and my neck is pretty stiff from working overhead on the ladder.

I actually started installing the cans themselves earlier in the week when they arrived via UPS from USA Light. USA Light is one of a few mail-order houses that offer a good selection of lighting goods – including a large assortment of recessed lights. I used this outfit a couple of years ago when we did the media room. They’re relatively inexpensive too, even considering shipping charges. I figure I saved about $8 per light as compared to Home Depot – not too bad. For these lights I ordered “kits” which include the can, the trim, and a bulb. I should note that in my 5-box order, at least one halogen lamp arrived burnt-out, and one trim was missing. I emailed USA Light and they’re sending the new trim – I only discovered the bad lamp yesterday and I figure I’ll eat the $3.50.

Some assembly is required:

The most difficult part of this project was the lighting plan. How many lights? What size lights? What wattage? Where to put the switches?

In the end, it was a pretty big guess. I used Visio to play with different arrangements, which in the end were somewhat governed by the ceiling joists. That is, due to the North/South orientation of the ceiling joists, there were limited East/West positions for the cans. In several desirable configurations, a can would have bisected one of the ceiling joists. The final plan has two parallel sets of lights on each side of the room. The lights land within quadrants of our future box-beam ceiling and are spaced 4’ apart within each quadrant, and 3’ from the next quadrant. If that doesn’t make sense, check out the drawing:

In the living room I installed 4 additional cans; 3 in the soffit above the front windows, and one in the soffit in the corner near the chimney.

It took a bit of thinking to figure out the best location for the switches. There is an obvious location, and that’s what we went with. It turns out that an open floorplan like ours doesn’t offer a lot of choices. We divided the overhead lights into three groups – two of the quadrants (8 lights) are over the dining area and on one dimmer. Another quadrant (4 lights) is over the fireplace and on a dimmer. And the 4 lights in the living area are on their own dimmer. The math works out too – dimmers are rated for a certain number of watts – we wouldn’t have been able to put all 16 cans on one dimmer because the theoretical total wattage of this would have exceeded the 600 watt capacity of the dimmers we chose. This works out nicely though because we can get some nifty front-to-back dimming effects with the three areas switched separately.

We went with “Aspire” dimmers which we bought at Lowes. They’re pricey – about $30 a piece. But they’re pretty neat and worth the cost, I think. One neat feature is that they’re “three-way” capable – that is, you can have two dimmers in different locations controlling one set of lights, and the “position” of one dimmer is reflected on the other. For the dining room lights we chose to have locate a second dimmer in reach of the table. I should note that this feature isn’t yet working – I think we have a defective “remote dimmer” and I need to go back to Lowes to exchange it. I’m certain I didn’t mis-wire the 3-way…

Overall I’m pretty happy with how this project is turning out. The lights are a bit dimmer than I had expected, but then again we don’t exactly have bright materials (like painted walls / ceilings) to reflect the light. Right now we have 35 watt lamps (Par-20 halogen lamps), and we could go to 50 watt if we wanted. More light is coming too – I wired for the chandelier over the dining table, but currently we have no actual fixture to install. And there are two hanging fixtures between the foyer / living room that are not yet installed.

I’m off work today (we get President’s day off – go figure) and there’s more lighting work to be done. If I can brave the cold, I’m headed outside to install 5 more recessed cans in the ceiling of our front porch. My neck hates me.