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jakkom

Install of Juno LED track lights

8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago

I wish I'd done better pre-project pix (don't we all, LOL). We have a large, slightly awkward Master suite which we converted out of an illegal in-law apartment. Being a modest 1940 urban cottage, the MBR was our Ugly Duckling.

We have remodeled every other room (incl the master bath), but this one was always last on the list. "Big but not beautiful" was the kindest description, LOL.

It was also seriously underlit. I originally had two of those inexpensive 3-lite tracks with the giant cans - remember the '80's? We still have them up in our LR but that room has 18' cathedral ceilings, so large light cans look in perfect proportion to the room.

But the MBR has a low flat ceiling. In fact we barely made code by 1/2". Big light cans hanging down looked awful. So in 2003 for this large 350 sq ft room, we replaced the tracks with two incandescent ceiling lights, one at each end of the room.

One had two bulbs, the other three. Still the lighting sucked. We got so desperate we took the covers off: glaring, but it gave us a little more light.

Enter our minor disaster of May 2015! A sewage clog followed by a broken water heater sent blackwater into my master bdrm closet and ruined the old W2W. Since we had to replace the flooring--well, why not replace the lighting as well? (which of course led to replacing other things equally expensive, as we once again fall into the Remodeling Black Hole).

Spouse wanted LOTS of light - as much as possible. His office is at one end of the MBR. I wanted something adaptable (e.g., where we could experiment with aiming light in different directions/angles).

Most important, I wanted it as small and close to the ceiling as possible. It was too expensive structurally to put in recessed lighting, so track lighting was the only solution that fit our parameters.

We discussed what we wanted with an electrician, who confirmed our panel was fine. He recommended a couple of local stores to us. I checked out the websites, deciding the Juno Trac-Lites 50 Watt PAR20 Flared White Track Head - Style # 22785, looked promising -- plus, they were less expensive than the other styles.

We lucked out with the store mgr. He was expert in translating our amateur hand scribbles of "this is what we're thinking of" into actual parts and connectors. He spent well over an hour with us, letting us handle the Track Head so we could see how it can be positioned various ways, showing us the difference in light beam width and intensity between the PAR16 and PAR20 bulbs.

The system was shipped to our doorstep. Beautifully packed, plus the store mgr had carefully marked one critical connector where he had reversed the polarity to make our complex configuration work. Our electrician was super-impressed and said this made his job much easier.

The electrician had never worked with Juno before and said he really liked it: a high quality system with well-thought-out details. We ended up with two separate tracks, an "H" and a "U", with 19 heads and a mix of PAR 16's and 20's.

And here's the photos (sorry for the long write-up). First is the "H" track, with 10 lites. The special reversed polarity connector is on the RH side where the single-light main track meets the right leg:

At the other end of the room, the "U" track, with 9 lites. I had to make an emergency run to the store when we discovered we had measured incorrectly! The outlet box wasn't near enough to the window wall, so we had to get a short length of track and another Tee connector:

Here's a more full-on shot I took last night. The new flooring has just gone in, replacing beige W2W carpet with Mannington's Adura Luxury Vinyl Plank (LVP) in Essex Oak. We are super-happy with how the lights and design turned out. You can't really tell from the photos, but the room is now beautifully lit - not glaring, but with the level of illumination that makes you think "lighting showroom":

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