I'm very interested in this post, ideamom. I'm wondering about the same issue in the vaulted area of my new home. The ceilings are over 20' high and the room is 20' x 30'6". I had originally been considering can lights, but now i'm not sure. Insulation will be very important in this part of the house as well. As far as brightness is concerned, i'm not real worried about daytime as there are tons of windows, but just wondering how you'd light such an expansive area in the evening without it looking ridiculous?
I also have a large, see through fireplace in the center of this area and I thought it would be nice to have some sort of lighting focused on this centerpiece of the room. Not sure how you'd do it without the cans?
I'm anxious to hear what everyone has to say.

I won this battle but not before the war started - DH insisted we needed cans. I said they would destroy the entire look of the ceiling (cathedral) in both the great room and MBR. I bought the cans, let the electrician wire them/install the boxes, then told DH to try to visualize things. The slope of our ceiling wasn't at the same angle as the boxes, so the light would not be thrown down but at an angle - say if you're sitting across the room, the bulb would be in your face. DH agreed to take them down. I ordered four sconces for each room. The electrician removed the boxes and pulled the wiring back to the wall and down to use for the sconces. The sconces and lamps give out more than enough lighting. My parents liked the idea so much, they put sconces in their lakehouse great room instead of cans.

Mamabirrd, I was told a fireplace spot fixture would have to be manufacturered exactly for your degree of slope in order for the light to hit directly on the middle of the fireplace.

fyi, I ordered sconces that are covered so the light goes out the top/bottom so we don't have sconces blaring in our eyes at night.

Interesting! DH and I are wondering not only for the GR, but how many in the whole house and where else to put them. I would be interested to hear from others that are finished. Maybe I'll start a thread.

Get more answers on the "Lighting" forum. In general the light that originates at say 20 feet up is diminished to next to nothing by the time it reaches the floor. You can generate some overall lighting by "washing" the ceiling with uplights from below and using wall sconces. If you still want overhead lighting you will need chandeliers.

We have six cans in our kitchen (could have gotten by with four) on one switch. Two more (one on either side of the six) for the walkways. I use these two 99% of the time.

Two bathrooms have two. One bathroom has one. MBath has three. Four in exercise room and four in a bedroom that was going to be an office. Three on the front porch veranda and three on the back, although we're taking two down and putting up two more ceiling fans. One in each shower/4. For now, an almost 6K sf house (over 6K if you count the garage and verandas) we have a grand total of 32 cans.

Oh, we also put 6 in the main/upper garage since I dislike flourescents. 38.

Thanks Allison! Did you put any in your hallways, mudroom, pantry, laundry room and closets or even find it necessary? Should we put any in the bedrooms in addition to the ceiling fixtures or is that a waste too?

Sorry Ideamom--didn't mean to interrupt your thread! I didn't realize there was a lighting forum either. I'll go on that one too!

My main level laundry room has two semi-flush fixtures. I brought an antique fixture from my last foyer to put in the pantry. All hallways have at least one semi-flush fixture. The lower level hallways have two each. The lower level laundry/storage room has a fluorescent fixture. (lol, have "flour..." in my last post!)

I put the cheapo ceiling mounted fixtures in most of the closets from Home Depot, then replaced the glass with antique globes I've had forever. The MBR closet is large and has two mini-chandelier's.

imo, it's really all a matter of personal preference. I personally dispise can lights so I wanted as few as possible. We have tons of windows for natural light.

Ok so that pretty much confirms that we don't want can lights in the vaulted great room. The designer suggested having 2 ceiling fans with light kits...not sure if I like that idea either. I tend to like ceiling fans only without light kits. I could do an old world style iron chandelier but wonder if that would be chandelier overkill? We plan to have a chandelier in the 2 story foyer, the dining room, one over the 6ft wide island so would that look silly to have one also in the greatroom? It is an open floor plan. Sconces are an idea (thanks allison0704) but wonder if that would be enough light in a 22X19 room? I was planning on not having any floor outlets because I didn't want to limit furniture arranging. Is there any rule of thumb as to how much wattage you need for a certain size room? Oh decisions...decisions!

Our great room is 25x 19 - four sconces, one floor lamp and two lamps behind the sofa. Another lamp being made. I never turn the floor lamp on - usually just the two behind the sofa and the four sconces.

We did put two floor plugs in - they are under the sofa but not under a rug. With the open floor plan and lake view across the back, there is only one place to put television and sofa so the floor outlets were a sure thing. If your room is open and the furniture will not be against the walls (only two chairs in mine are against walls) I would not skip floor outlets. You should be able to see where the furniture needs to go just by looking at plans.

I didn't opt for a chandelier or even put in a capped box for future use - didn't want the capped box showing and another personal preference thing for me not having a hanging fixture in the great room. No fans either. I didn't want anything hanging down in the room.

I never use light kits on ceiling fans either. We have copper sconces on the verandas for lighting.

Our great room is 18 x 25 and we have eight can lights & it's plenty. We also have two lamps & mostly just use one lamp. When the cans are on it's Very Bright in here. I have them on a dimmer and rarely turn it up all the way. Our ceilings are 9' and 13' in the middle of the vault.

midwestmom: Would you mind posting a photo of the can lights in your great room?

Our great room is 24' x 20' with an 18' ceiling and we have 6-6" cans and it is plenty of light. We mainly use lamps in our living room, but put in the recessed lights so that we could light the room without lamps if we wanted to. Actually, we usually on use 4 of the 6 cans because 2 of the 6 cans are over the loft. The loft is cantelevered into the room about 5' and we also have cans under it, but never use them. I used the 4 cans tonight to see if I could read, and it was plenty of light to read too.

I was told cans are good for spot lighting but not good for lighting up an entire room. I have 6 in my kitchen to light up counter space.

I have a balcony/catwalk that stretches across my great room. I put 2 above the balcany and 2 under the balcony to light those walkways. Since the spaces are open to the great room you will be able to see those from there and they may offer a little light but they are not meant to be the main source of light in my great room. I will have a ceiling fan/light combo and have just now realized I probably need more than that thanks to this thread.

Allison, have you been happy with your floor plugs. How did you decide where to put them?

You need to remember that there are lots of different sizes of can lights and types of light bulbs for can lights and size and type of light bulb as well as ceiling height have a big impact on the amount of light. Our old house was dark and we didn't want any dark corner, so we went overboard on lighting in our new house. I described the cans in our living room in my earlier post. In my kitchen I have a mix of 4" and 6" cans. In my kitchen I have 4" cans in the soffits that extend to the edge of my counter that only provide task lighting (8' off the floor) and do not light up the room at all, just the counter. I have 4-6" cans in the 9' ceiling around my island that do light up the whole room, although I prefer to use the pendants over my island instead for general lighting. I would only use 6" cans with a ceiling that is 9' or higher, and I don't think that 4" cans could provide general lighting in any room unless you had lots and lots of them. I second Allison on the floor outlets. We only have one chair against the wall in our living room, and all the other furniture is floating in the room. We have two floor outlets and they are great. The link below gives some info about recessed lights that might be helful.

Here is a link that might be useful: can light info

ideamom, i'll try & take some pictures later today.

I tried to photograph the ceiling in my greatroom to show the can lights, but it is difficult at best because of the size and angles.

Personally, I like the can lights in our 5:12 vaulted ceiling. They are special cans that can be swiveled to make the bulb perpendicular to the floor. Between the can lights, decorative lights, audio speakers, HVAC vents, smoke detectors, heat detectors and fire sprinklers, there is so much going on in our ceilings that it is nice to have a relatively unobtrusive light source.

Just by sheer dumb luck, the trim on the light was the exact same color as our ceiling paint.

fyi, the rims can be painted after installation.

Charliedawg, our plugs are perfect. With the lakeview, fireplace, tv, open kitchen and arches to DR and foyer, there is really only one natural place for our sofa. I knew we wanted to put a sofa table behind it, so we left room for that and enough room to walk between table and the cedar posts at the kitchen opening.

The electrician said there was no rush since the plugs were going into the main level, which is second story, so we were able to wait until house was framed to decide exactly where they were going. DH and I used empty boxes to place where the sofa and measured to make sure there was enough room behind for table.

(You can see the two cans in the kitchen we didn't need :( )

Here is a link that might be useful: Great room

We have 6 cans about 22 feet up w/ R40 23W dimmable CFL floods. We like the great flexibility it gives for various times when used/not used with/without the other room lighting. You can see the 3 on one side here.

thanks for the info & link. anyone else have pictures?

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Here's mine. Sorry I forgot about this thread until I saw it linked on the decorating board.

Midwestmom, can you post more pictures of your living room? I like the paint color, trim, and brown shade combo. That's just the look I want.

teach i'd love it post more pix if the room was decorated, or not a total mess right now. The paint is SW Universal Khaki, the ceiling and trim are SW Alabaster & I got the bamboo shades at Lowes. Thanks so much for the compliments.

teach i found a few pix of my great room that aren't hideous, i can post them in a new thread so as not to hijack this one, if you'd like.

You can email them to me if you would like... guerriero@opsb.net
Thanks