Electricians Hate Me for Showing You This!

0:00 Installing recess lighting is a great way to brighten up a room, and you can save thousands of dollars doing it yourself. But between the wiring, the spacing, and the layout, I know it can be overwhelming for beginners. So, today, I'm going to show you 12 easy steps for successful install, and the two biggest challenges you're probably going to run into and how to deal with them. Now, you're probably worried about wiring and how that's all going to work with this recess lighting. And I know that because we did a poll and over 50% of you said wiring is your main concern. So, I'm going to show you two things to look for that right out of the gate, you're going to figure out if this is going to be an easy project or a little more involved. And don't worry if it's a little more involved cuz I've got some solutions for you. So, the first thing you want to look at is what kind of light switches do you have in the room and what do they control? So, basically,

0:45 you're going to either have a regular onoff light switch or a three-way switch. So, if you're in a room with just one entrance, like an office or a bedroom, then you probably just have a regular onoff switch. So, it's going to be off when it's down or it's going to be on when it's up. And it's even got little text in there that says off and on on it. Now, if you're in a larger room that has multiple entrances like this one that I'm in, then you probably have three-way switches. When you look at a three-way switch, it doesn't say on or off because it depends upon what's happening at either side because it could be off when it's up or it could be on when it's up. It just depends upon the combination of the two switches. And if you're in an area that controls other parts of the house, you might have multiple switches like I have here in this room. So, what you're looking for

1:30 here, best case scenario, is that you have a switch or a three-way switch that controls a central light in the room or a central fan. And that means that you have wiring going from the switch right up into the middle of the room that you can tap into. And that is great. Now, the other scenario could be you don't have a light in the room. And that switch actually controls an outlet. That's exactly what we had in the front room that I installed lights in a few years back at my house. And if you're in this situation, unfortunately, that is going to be the more difficult because now you're going to have to tap into that wiring that's going into the outlet and figure out how to get that up into the ceiling. But let's go to the next thing to look for, and that is what's going on up in your ceiling. So, access to your ceiling and what's going on up there is probably going to be the

2:16 biggest determining factor. whether this is just a 20 oz bottle of dew job, if it's a six-ack of dew, or if I need a whole 12-pack of caffeine to get me through the project. So, again, here we have a few options. The first option is the room I'm in here. I am in a singlestory house. So, above me, I have an open attic. So, I know that I can get up there and look around and I'm going to be able to access the joists and the wiring and see what's really going on. So, the second option is that you have living space above where you're at. So, there is no attic. you just have the ceiling space, which is going to be your floor joists of the room above you. Now, this one could be really good or really bad, and it just depends upon the ceiling joist that were used and how things were constructed. The only way to figure out what's going on up there is

3:01 to take a look and see. So, to get a look up inside your ceiling, you're basically going to have to drill a hole and look in there. You can try to go through one of the fixtures if you have some accent lighting or something like that, but most of the times you're just going to need a face full of dust and not be able to see anything. Oh, golly damn. So, instead, I've got one of these little guys, which is a boroscope inspection tool, little video inspection tool. So, it's got this little wand here at the end, and it is basically has a camera, and I can see up inside there. And I just bought this thing. I think this was around a hundred bucks, but I know they have them as cheap as like $20 that'll hook up to your cell phone. And I've not really used this a ton, so I can't recommend it or not, but I'll have a link down below in the description where you can check out a couple different options. I'm going to drill a hole and we'll see what we can see. All right. So, we're going to go right

3:47 up here into the cavity and I can see what's going on on here. And actually, I'm able to record on this screen, which is pretty cool. So, we'll see if we can put that into the footage. So, if I go, looks like there is a joist. I got dust on there. So, what's really nice about this is I can articulate the head there and see what's going on. But, I definitely have solid wooden joists up there. Plus, I can see the insulation and some spiders, too. So, that's an easy way to see what's going on up in your ceiling cavity. And if you have attic access like I do, then you can just go up there and check. So, let's go check that out, too. All right, I'm going to be heading up into the attic. And this is the most sketchy attic access I have ever even heard of. That's right. The attic access is above the exterior door, which is

4:35 up in the carport that's like 12 feet in the air. So, I've got the ladder sitting on the steps. I but let's just go. Hopefully your attic access is much much better than this. And I can almost certainly tell you it will be. All right. So, when you're up in the attic, this is what you're going to probably see. Blown in insulation. And our room is right over in this vicinity over here. So, let's check it out. Most important thing is that you stay on some type of wood. Do not step in between the rafters and uh you know, end up in your dining room. This is actually that tan light that is to the left of the fireplace. So, we have solid studs, which is fine because we can run the electricity over the top. The next thing you're going to need to know, and the

5:20 next thing on the pole you guys said you were most worried about, is the layout and spacing. So, let's go through it one step at a time. I just recently did a buying guide on recessed lighting, and the ones that I'm going to be using are this Insignor 6in canless recess light. And these are these thin wafer lights. And we'll talk more about these later during the install, but they are awesome. And these are a,50 lumens per light, and they have 120° beam angle. Both of those are going to be important in just a minute. So, the next thing we need to know is how many lights do we need? And here's exactly how you figure that out. Basically, what we're looking for is the amount of light that we want in the total room. And depending upon what type of room there is, you're going to want different amounts of light. And these are going to be measured in lumens. And a lumen is just the total

6:06 light emitted by a light source. One lumen equals to about the light that you would get from a tiny little birthday candle about a foot away. Now, on the other hand, a 100 W incandescent light bulb is about 1,600 lumens. So, looking at different types of rooms, you're going to need different types of lumens. The spot in your house that is going to need the most amount of light is going to be in the kitchen. And in a kitchen, you want about 35 to 50 lumens per square foot because, you know, you're cutting up food, you want to make sure you don't chop off a finger and put it in the mashed potatoes. In a dining room, about 30 to 40 lumens per square foot because you want to be able to see that finger that's sitting there in your mashed potatoes. Now, for a bonus room or great room, 20 to 30 lumens per square foot cuz you might be doing some activities like playing board games, doing a puzzle, something like that. Or

6:52 a bedroom or living room, you might be down to 10 to 20 lumens cuz you don't need a lot of direct light. And of course, in all these situations, you can have task specific light. If you want to read a book or something like that, have a lamp on a side table. Now, depending upon what kind of room you have, we can start doing the math. And for this room, this is 24 ft x 15 ft, which is 360 ft. So, I'm going to be actually shooting for around 20 lmmens per square foot because I know that that's just a nice amount of light that I like. So, given the square footage of this room, that means I'm going to need 7,200 to 10,800 total lumens in this room. So, now if we just do the math, divide that by the,50 lumens that each of my light is going to give out, that means I need somewhere between 7 and 10 of these in my room.

7:38 And I'm going to go for eight. So, when you divide it out and you do the math, having eight lights at 1,50 will give us 23 lumens per square foot. And that is going to be perfect in this area. So you can go up or down for your room. And if you want to go high and then use a dimmer to bring it back down, that's also totally cool. All right, so now the next step we can get into is the spacing and the layout. The most common recommendation is that you should space your lights half the distance of the height of your room. So if you have 8ft ceilings, you should space them 4 ft apart. I don't agree with that, but here's where that comes from. So earlier I talked about the beam angle of that light that I chose. And so, indulge me and let me nerd out for just a minute. The beam angle on those lights is 120°. So, if you had two of these lights

8:23 spaced 4 ft apart with 120° beam angle, here's what that would visually look like. Now, of course, it's not harsh lines of light because the light does diffuse, but those would overlap just around 7 ft off of the ground. And so that's kind of where that recommendation comes from is that you have full coverage and overlapping of light all the way around the room. But honestly, you don't need that much light. So let's see what that would look like if we spaced them 7 ft apart. Now you were just over 6 ft off of the ground is where that overlap would be. So if you start thinking about the overlapping of the light and dark spots in the room, you want most of that overlapping to be above your head. So, even with a 7ft spacing, that light overlap and coverage goes all the way over to the height of

9:09 over a normal person. I'm definitely a normal person cuz I'm 5'10" and 3/4. And with these high-owered lights, you're going to have a lot more light than you really think you need. Now, that being said, if you look at the lights from above, because we actually have a grid, the dark areas are going to be kind of in the center of a four light grid. So you could have an area that didn't have light overlap in the middle. But honestly, it's just not that big of a deal. Actually, in the lights that we installed back at my house in our front room, we had them spaced 92 in apart, which is well over 7 ft, and it is just fine. If you're in an 8ft room, staying under 6 ft is great. If you're in a 9 ft tall room, staying around 7 or 8 ft should probably be fine as well. All right. So, at this point, now that I know I need eight lights, now it's basically just getting even spacing off

9:56 of those walls. And you do want to make sure that the distance between the lights is about twice the distance of the distance between the light and the walls. So, if I have 3 and 1/2 ft from the wall to my light, then I'm going to have 7 ft to that next light. And you have to fudge it just a little bit. So, if you look at actually how we're going to lay it out, I'm going to have 5' 8 in between my lights and 3 and 1/2 ft from the walls. And basically that's just because I don't want to have my lights too close to the wall. So it is a little bit of a science and a little bit of an art. But this is how ours is going to look. And I'm going to start laying them out here. All right. So now we can start laying everything out on the ceiling. And I'm wearing gloves because when you're up here working on the ceiling, the last thing you want to do is get your grimy fingerprints on the ceiling and have to repaint everything. So wear

10:42 some gloves. We're going to be 3 and 1/2 ft off of this back wall. I'm actually going to do the same thing so it's nice and symmetrical off that corner. Now I can grab a laser line and lay them out going down this way and have a nice straight line. So I'll come down to the far end of the room. I have the position for the last light. Now I'm going to connect the laser line in between them. And then I can fill in the other two using the spacing in between the lights in the center of the room. All right, here's a little tip to get your measurements cuz you're going to be up on the ceiling. And how do you get your starting point? I'm just going to put a little screw up there into the mark that I already made. So, I can hook the tape measure on the side of that screw and then get my measurements going down the line. And my next mark is going to be 5'8 in. What? Oh, that's my hand. Don't put your hand in front of the laser cuz

11:28 then you can't you can't see it. Now, just do the same thing on the other end. Now, the key is did I get the right measurement in between these two that I just marked? So, I'm going to kind of eyeball this That's good enough for government work. So, I'm going to use this mark and the other one in the corner and use the laser level to get this line. Then I can just repeat and use the same process and do all the ones on the other side of the room. And while I'm doing that, I want to tell you about something new from today's sponsor into it. If you're running or managing a growing business like I am here, then here's a hard truth. What got you here is probably not going to get you where you want to go next. At Fix This, Build That, we're not just building projects. We're running a media company. We're managing partnerships and

12:14 selling woodworking plans and 3D prints through our e-commerce shop. And tracking expenses and profitability can get real tricky when you're trying to manage across several different businesses, especially when you're using a spreadsheet like I used to do. Now, I quickly upgraded to QuickBooks self-employed and then went on to QuickBooks Online after that as the business grew. But now I'm realizing we need more than accounting and just tagging expenses. What we really need is deeper insights, instant visibility across all the moving parts of our business. And that's why I'm excited about in it enterprise suite. It's not just accounting. It's like putting your entire business under one dashboard. We can manage multiple entities or revenue streams like project builds and digital plans. It'll also let us track profitability by project, service, or

13:00 even client type. So, we can have a clear picture of what's actually making us money and where we might need to make some changes. So, if you're a key business decision maker in construction, ecom, or pro services, especially if you're growing fast, this kind of system can be a gamecher. It helps you cut through the chaos, make smarter decisions, and grow your business with confidence. You can learn more about in it enterprise suite with the link down below in the description. And a big thank you to in it for sponsoring today's video. Let's get back to the install. All right, now you can finally start getting to the exciting part of the project. Cutting huge holes in your ceiling. This guy is specifically made for recess lighting. And you'll see them anywhere between 6 to 6 and 1/4 6 and 38. So even though these are 6 in lights, the actual size of the light is

13:45 much larger than that. So uh if we line this up here, you can see that this is actually going to fit in just nicely. But if you just start drilling with this guy, you're going to make a huge mess. So, there's a secret weapon I have that is one of my favorite tools ever. And it's this rubber boot here. This is like a rubber shield. So, you take your big hole saw and you put it in this hole in the boot and then stick that in your drill and tighten it up. And so, this guy is going to capture all your drywall dust while you're cutting. So, I put this up against the ceiling. It has a nice seal, a ceiling seal. And I can just rip this bad boy and get it going. And all that dust is going to be right inside this bowl when I pull it off. You're going to have a little bit of escape. But this thing just saves such a huge mess. I absolutely love it. I'm

14:31 going to have a link down below in the description for this and all the other tools that I've used for this install in case you want to check those out and make your install a bit easier. But I'm going to go ahead and start drilling these holes. All right, and we are through. And absolutely no dust has escaped. So, I'm just going to leave this here for just a minute to let some of that uh cloud fall down in there. Perfection. So, they do have a little foil radiant barrier. I don't know if that's like on the back side of the foam or if they just put that down, but I'm going to go ahead and cut that out. And then that should reveal just the insulation, which There we go. So, they probably put that up there uh before they put in the blown in insulation, which now you can see.

15:18 [Music] On the second hole, we ran into what would be a project killer if I was using can lights instead of these slim wafers. So, I literally hit just right directly into the center of a joist. So, now if you're trying to stick up a can, that would definitely not fit because you've got your joist here. you're not going to cut that. Your house is going to fall down. But with these slim guys, we can fit right on top of that. And then the junction box, which I'll show you a little bit here in a minute, can just tuck up right to one side or the other. And that is why these are such great lights to use and the easiest install by far. [Music]

16:13 I believe they say discretion is the better part of valor. And today I am going to use a little discretion and I'm actually going to remove these can lights and see if it'll fit that same hole and reuse this because I feel like using the hole that's already there, it's going to make a lot more sense as far as time and constraints and it also will kind of give a little bit more accent to the fireplace. And if I don't like the way it looks, I'll just leave a little bit extra space. I could always just pop a new hole here and the move would be extremely easy after I get the install done. So, I'm going to shut off the power, pull these out, and see if we could just retrofit right into this existing hole. Right now, we are at the step that you have all been fearing, which is the wiring, which you don't have to really fear it at all because it's fairly easy

16:58 as long as you have the right tools. And so, in this room, I know that I have the light switch that is going up to the fan that we're going to tap into the circuit that goes into the light kit. Now, in general, the wiring is really easy. You just have to get connection to one of the lights and then go from there. and daisy chain in series to each of the other lights. So, you hit one of them, it doesn't really matter which one you tie into. Actually, for this install, I think I'm going to tie into this one over here since it's in that same stud bay as the fan. So, once I tie into it, then I can run a wire to the next one, to the next one, and so on till I get to all of them. So, if you do have attic access like I do, you're going to see exactly how I'm going to do it. But, if you don't have that attic access, you see we've got joist right here, and they're probably going to be every 16 in. the joists are maybe 24 in.

17:44 You're going to have to drill a hole through each of those joists as you're running across down to the next hole.