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How far must my ceiling be lowered for recessed lighting?

shinobu
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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