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How far must my ceiling be lowered for recessed lighting?

17 years ago

Hi everyone. I'm totally new to all-things-electrical so bare with me, but I could really use some advice. I'm about ready to begin my master bedroom/master bath remodel and one of the things we need to address is the exposed electrical in the existing space. Our house is basically log cabin style with solid wood exterior walls and all the ceilings on the first floor are solid wood planks. The current electrical is actually (frighteningly) illegal with exposed wires (not enclosed in metal) running all over the ceiling to attach to the existing crappy ceiling fixtures. So we definitely need to lower the ceiling to install and hide all the up-to-code electrical.

So my question is, exactly how much will this ceiling need to be lowered? I like the streamlined, uncluttered look of recessed downlights but I'm worried that, with the needed lowering of the ceiling plus the depth of the cans, that this will significantly lower it TOO much (the current height is about 8'3''). We can only put wall lighting along the one shared short bedroom/bathroom wall (due to the solid wood walls everywhere else) so we're basically limited to some sort of ceiling lighting. What are my best options with the least amount of sacrificed ceiling height? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

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Comments (5)

Jon1270
17 years ago
4" (on the smaller end of things) cans will require at least a 6" drop, but I'm not sure I'd go that way. It's not mandatory that your wires be hidden inside walls and ceilings; you could also use surface-mounted conduit/raceway to get legal. I'm also wondering why you couldn't put recessed lights into the existing ceiling.
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joed
17 years ago
Romex type cable is perfectly legal on the surface up at ceiling level. It is legal at lower levels as well as long as it is not exposed to damage hazard.
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shinobu
Original Author
17 years ago
Unfortunately I can't put recessed lights in the existing ceiling because it basically serves as the subfloor for the 2nd (main) floor. I have exposed surface mounted (legal, yay!) conduit lines on the main floor but they're not much of an eye sore because they're hidden along the exposed ceiling beams. I was worried that doing this on the first floor (where there are few ceiling beams to hide the conduit) would look unfinished or sloppy. I just think it would look wierd for the bathroom, especially. Is there a way to do this with a finished, non-industrial look?
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DavidR
17 years ago
Cans are fine for highlighting certain areas, but they're actually pretty inefficient for general lighting. They create pools of light and shadow - especially with a low ceiling.

I can't imagine going to that much trouble to get uneven light. If I were you, I'd drop the ceiling just enough to fish cable and mount boxes, and then install good quality surface-mount fixtures.

Some day this silly fad for recessed lights will abate. They'll become unfashionable, and houses will finally have good, efficient, reasonably priced lighting again. People will come to your house and say, "Oh, cans, those are so nineties!" ;-)
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J Lopez
4 years ago
Some day maybe DavidR. Just not today in the year 2020 (12 years later). Lol.

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