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Lighting Design Dilemma Living Room

Recessed lighting layout, oddly shaped living room.

5 years ago

Hi everyone. I need some verification and if I took this to the local hardware store I'm afraid of the answer or reaction I would get! Though maybe they would be a good resource. I have already purchased the lights so that might be awkward.

I created a diagram, Layout PDF link, and added the specs for the lights at the bottom. I will be 100% honest, I don't know what all the information means exactly. I just saw mounting height and took the first number, I highlighted it, and put 9.1' circles around each light. I don't know what FC is...

I think for the shape of the room I did about the best I can. I'm wanting to mainly light up the perimeter of the room, not sure if I need any lights in the center, other than the ceiling fan which has 4 candelabra lights. Though I'm not opposed to putting recessed lights in the center of the room. I think it would be hard to do that and keep any sort of layout symmetry the way I have them laid out now, and what I came up with was pretty difficult for me!

My ceilings are 10'. I plan on 2 dimmers and have the lights listed as Ln-1 or Ln-2 with the length of wire I think I need.

Is the coverage good or will the coverage leave a little to be desired? Shoudl I squeeze more lights in and try to overlap more?

Thanks for looking!

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Comments (2)

PRO
Patricia Colwell Consulting
5 years ago
I would ditch the fan lights and even the fan if you do not need it. Then if you wanted to add something interesting you could do a great piece in place of the fan. As for the rest you should have 4” pots with LED bulbs ideally in daylight color so somewhere between 3500 and 5000K range I find pot lights in high ceiling pretty useless for anything but ambient light so you will need lamps both floor and table too.If you post the measurements of the room it would help too.
John Long thanked Patricia Colwell Consulting
John Long
Original Author
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Thanks Patricia, I'll upload a PDF with the room dimensions. As far as ditching the fan lights, I tend to agree with you. I hardly ever use the fan lights, it puts off very harsh light. I can't get rid of the fan though, I live near Houston and it gets hot here in the summer!

I planned for the recessed lighting to be more for an accent and ambient lighting, just to brighten the room a little. I'm installing caseta dimmers and will probably have them dimmed to 20% or so most of the time and will probably have the ones near the kitchen off most of the time, which is why I'm splitting the lights into 2 circuits. I'm also toying with the idea of installing individual dimmers or relays to control each light individually. But when I have them all on at full brightness I don't want a bunch of shadows, so that's why I'm having trouble with the layout. I'm just not sure if I have enough lights and I also don't want my ceiling looking like a mini golf course, lol.

I really prefer 3000K lights, I like how they are close to incandescent bulbs in color and the ones I have are 80 CRI which is average, but they look really good in my kitchen. There were existing 6" cans in the kitchen and I put surface mount halo led's in that are 3000K and the color in the room is very nice, to me.

Edit: I added dimensions to the original PDF in the link in my first post.

Thanks!
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