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| We are in the midst of remodeling a small kitchen (10' x 12') in an old home and was wondering if we go the route of recessed lighting, would that be enough light to supply for the kitchen?
I personally have no experience with recessed lighting, but i do know alot of people use it as secondary lighting. This would be my primary lighting install in a suspended ceiling. We currently have a ceiling fan in the center, and want to do away with a single-fixtured lighting unit. So my questions are:
From my reading, it sounds like i would want 4" recessed on every alternating ceiling block. That would give me 6 in the center of the room. would that be enough? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Yes you can. I used Cree lr6 lamps. |
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| You can use recessed lights as your primary source of lighting or a secondary source. You can use Cree Cr-6 or LR-6 or some of the other nice LED recessed lights. The newer, better LED can lights have huge beam spreads on them and are very pleasant plus with the correct dimmers dim as well as an incandescent light. |
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| Some additional thoughts 4" cans are more expensive than 6" cans. I went for ~ 35 lumens per sq ft. According to that calculation you will need 7 cans (assuming each can provides 600 lumens) without any other sources of illumination. If you have a suspended ceiling, you could consider CR22 troffers or fluorescent troffers. Other alternatives - cove lighting, ... A night pict |
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| Hey David, which cans are those? It's hard to tell? CR-6? |
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| LR-6 as CR-6 wasn't available |
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| Surface mount fixtures and/or pendants with translucent shades will give you more indirect light and thus more even, shadow-free lighting with fewer fixtures (meaning lower installation cost). Also remember that cans require many holes in the ceiling, which increases heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer. |
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| davidr, this is so not true. None of what you said is accurate at all, other than having higher install costs for recessed lighting, but you can use IC rated can that are air tight, and cover them with insulation in areas that may need it. If you install can correctly using one piece trims from the LED's you will have no pressure loss, or close to 0. We have tested this with insulation companies that can blow air into an attic and we can measure what kind of leakage we get, and with the one piece trim LED lights we get zero. We have tested 0.2 a number of times on the lights and have tested others that did get some air loss, but it was so small that there were other areas that had way more leakage than the cans every single time, such as cracks in the ceiling, attic entryways, whole house fans, central heating and air con systems. Pendants are a poor choice of light, many people don't like lights that hang down typically killing an open area feel, and those typically will give you shadows. In fact ALL lights that are installed in any house will bring some level of shadowing anyways. We have found using Extech Easyview Digital Light Meter we have found less shadowing with Cree and other LED cans than with any other light source. I have the numbers to back this up. Mike |
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