Recessed Lighting Installation Services

Our Expert Electricians Can Safely Install Recessed Lighting in Northern Virginia Homes and Businesses

The Benefits of Recessed Lighting, Northern Virginia Style

Flexibility and a clean, uncluttered look are two of the major reasons Northern Virginia homeowners are gravitating toward recessed lighting these days. These are just some of the specific applications that can make a home or office shine:

  • General Lighting: Recessed lighting works well as general lighting for family rooms and basements because it casts a bright, even glow over the entire area. A “step” or “open” baffle trim around the light is the most common type of trim used in these applications because they shape the light and reduce glare. For general lighting in a room, we recommend arranging the lights in an even pattern that matches the shape of the room.
  • Subject Lighting: Many people like to use recessed lighting to cast a highlighting glow over a particular piece of art or sculpture. Obviously, this application is popular in art shops, galleries and museums, but it works very nicely as an option for recessed lighting in Northern Virginia homes as well. By using a “gimbal” or “eyeball” trim, the light can be focused on a particular area to draw attention to a particular feature within a room for design purposes.
  • Task Lighting: Building recessed lighting into a kitchen, studio or office workspace is also a popular application. Using several recessed lights in a small area like this focuses more light on high-traffic countertops, cabinets, work tables, and cuts down on bothersome shadows.

Benefits of Using Recessed Lighting

One of the major things we do at Root Electric is help homeowners upgrade light fixtures when they are doing a remodel or renovation. Sometimes all it takes to totally upgrade a room is to switch from a hanging light fixture to recessed lighting. Recessed lighting has become more popular over the last decade for a host of reasons, one of which is that recessed lighting makes a room feel bigger. This makes it especially popular in smaller rooms or any room that needs to feel more spacious.

So what are the benefits of recessed lighting?

1. Recessed lighting makes a room feel bigger because it actually takes up less visual space in the room. Because the light cans are set into the ceiling itself, nothing hangs down to interrupt the visual space of the ceiling.

2. Recessed lighting also makes a room look bigger due to an effect called “wall washing”. No, that doesn’t mean you go and take soap and water to the walls. Wall washing is a lighting effect that casts more light around the room via use of the right kind of trim (the part of the light that is visible from the hole in the ceiling). Wall washed trim involves a directional reflector and a light scoop that directs light onto the wall. If you have a sloped ceiling, an “eyeball trim” can be used.

To really take advantage of the wall washing effect, recessed lighting need to be spaced correctly away from the wall and apart from each other. Recessed lighting should be spaced apart from each other at the same distance they are spaced away from the wall. For example, if you your ceiling is 9 feet high, we place the recessed light fixtures 2-3 feet away from the wall and from each other. The higher the ceiling, the higher that spacing will need to be. Then aim the lightings toward the wall with the directional reflectors and it will literally wash the wall with overlapping, ambient light. The end result? The recessed lighting makes the room feel bigger and brighter.

3. Recessed lighting also casts light on the wall you want to highlight for other design reasons. Consider recessed lighting if you want to highlight a wall bookcase, works of art or a special collection of some sort.

4. There are also other benefits of recessed lighting. First of all, it comes in all kinds of colors (the trim and the lights and the reflectors) so they can be used to really upgrade a room in several ways. The casing for recessed lights also protects it from dust, children and mishaps, so it’s also a safer lighting option than hanging lights.

Keep in mind that anytime you want to upgrade your light fixtures, you need the help of an experienced residential electrician for safety reasons. To learn more about the benefits of recessed lighting, to ask about a project you have in mind, contact Root Electric and talk with our team of Woodbridge electricians today at (703) 494-3989.


What our customers say!

These guys are great. They installed recessed lighting in my living room and two new ceiling fans from scratch in the bedrooms. Highly recommend them, they do great work and amazing customer service.

Brandon H.
Fairfax Station, VA


recessed-lighting-upgrades

For an Inexpensive Home Update, Try Installing Recessed Lights

The great thing about installing recessed lights is that they really are an inexpensive way to update the appearance of your home in so many ways. Here at Root Electric, we have helped many customers design a lighting plan and install recessed lighting to create artistic, utilitarian and fresh lighting designs. In fact, updating your home with recessed lighting can also be a great way to save energy too, especially with all of the new LED lights available for recessed lighting. These new bulbs can give off a lot of light with a much longer lifespan, all while burning off nearly 85% less energy.

No matter what room you want to brighten with recessed lights, there are several technical and design aspects to consider before installation, and most homeowners policies—for safety reasons—require that you enlist the services of a residential electrician for project like this. Call us at (703) 494-3989 and one of our residential electricians can come over to evaluate the situation with you.

Your Goals for Installing Recessed Lights

Where do you want to install recessed lights, and why? In the kitchen to give more focused light to your cooking and food prep areas? In the living room to highlight certain areas? What kind of recessed lighting do you want to install? There are fixed “down” lights that cast a cone of light over a specific area (these can be overlapped to provide even lighting over large areas, such as a basement room), or there are also “eyeball” lights that you can swivel to shine light on a particular area. These are particularly useful in work spaces. Also, replacing hanging light fixtures with recessed lights can update a room’s look by cleaning up the ceiling lines. While installing recessed lights won’t add actual square feet to the room, they will give the illusion and feeling of more open space by removing that interruption from the ceiling, since they are set into the ceiling and not on it, or dangling down from it.

Installing Recessed Lights: Technical Considerations

Anytime you replace a light fixture, there are technical, electrical issues that you need to keep in mind for a safe installation. While installing recessed lights may seem easy at first, it is important to have a residential electrician help for safety’s sake. We will evaluate the situation based on the following information:

  1. Where will the light fixtures be installed? The main question here is what is above the light fixture? If you are upstairs, only the attic may be involved. If you are on a lower level with finished rooms above, wiring will need to be threaded through the ceiling. Your choice of lighting cans also depends on what currently resides above the lights.
  2. Do you have copper or aluminum wiring? The type of wiring used for the recessed lighting installation needs to match the wiring you have in your home already. However, it is also possible that the wiring, especially aluminum wiring or ungrounded wiring, will have to be changed to make your home safer in the first place.
  3. How many lights do you want to add? Keep in mind that your current circuitry may not be sufficient for adding more lights than you already have. Let’s say your current lighting situation draws 400 watts (from 4 100-watt bulbs). If your total capacity is 400, but you want to add more lights, our residential electricians will need to update your circuitry and make electrical upgrades. In older homes, this is a good idea for safety in any case.

Installing recessed lights is an inexpensive way to update the appearance of your home, and we love helping our customers with projects like this. Before starting on any electrical project, be sure to call us at (703) 494-3989. We can give your home an electrical safety inspection and help you get the most out of your new recessed lighting project!

Why Installation of Recessed Lighting Requires a Professional Electrician

Recessed lighting is a simple, elegant solution for lighting in many applications, but it is not quite as simple to install it. Several safety and structural concerns require the help of an experienced electrician to install recessed lighting. Northern Virginia homes frequently fall into the vintage category, for example, and were not wired with modern lighting solutions in mind. So a number of technical, safety and design factors need to be considered before recessed lighting can be safely installed.

If you are considering installing recessed lighting in your Northern Virginia home, office or gallery, call us here at (703) 494- 3989. We can evaluate what electrical components your space already has, or will need to have, from wiring and transformers to bulbs and IC-rated housings. Careful foresight and planning for a recessed lighting installation can save you money, time and electrical fire hazards down the road.

As professional electricians with an eye for design and a passion for safety, we can help.

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