Recessed Lighting LED Retrofit Kits are Awesome
Last year, my wife and I bought a house. We bought Brian’s house. Isn’t that weird?
Brian’s old house, our new house, has recessed can lights all over the place. Two or more in each bathroom, four in the living room, four in Chris’s office. If my count is correct, there’s a total of 18 of these fixtures in the house.
Brian had CFL spotlights in most of the fixtures, but he had LED spotlights in the living room. One of the CFL bulbs in Chris’s office was getting flaky, and I didn’t like the LED bulbs in the living room. The LEDs weren’t diffused well, so when they were on, it felt like there was a bright point of light glaring at me while watching TV.
An electrician recommended looking at LED retrofit kits for our can lights, and it was a fantastic idea!
We installed 18 of them over a year ago. I’m thinking of this today, because one burned out today. I took it apart, and one of the LEDs had burned out. It is a bummer that one bad LED our of twenty LEDs can cause an entire unit to go bad, but I’m not unhappy. We only had one unit die, and we have 18 installed. We had one spare left, so after swapping that one out, I ordered more spares.
I think we're doing a good job. I just cut 3" off the legs of @libbets's new 48" desk extension. She's using up about 16' of wall space with all that desk, and it is about the right height for a short lady! I hope she's happy with the arrangement! pic.twitter.com/AT8OyzO7Ii
— Pat Regan (@patsheadcom) May 24, 2019
The LED retrofit kits that we ordered come from Amazon in 1, 4, and 12 packs. The 12-packs are $93 with 2-day Prime shipping. That’s $7.75 per light. It isn’t just a bulb. It is a new face for the recessed light.
Installation couldn’t be simpler. Remove your old bulb. The retrofit kits have a wire with a screw in piece at the end that goes into the light socket. Screw that in, extend the little arms on the retrofit kit, and push it into the existing can.
That’s it. You’re done. You don’t have to remove anything. If you want to go back to your old bulbs, you still can.
We had a couple of cans that weren’t properly covering their holes in the drywall anymore. In most cases, the retrofit kit managed to cover that up.
In two rooms, we have these kits on dimmers, and they’re working fine. My only complaint is that they flicker a bit when the air conditioner kicks in. I imagine they could solve that problem with a capacitor, but it isn’t the end of the world.
Our lights look better. The diffusion of the LEDs is great. I am quite pleased with our little lighting upgrade. We went with the 5000K daylight-equivalent temperature bulbs. I’m a fan of daylight bulbs. They make me feel less tired, and they’re more cheerful!
I recommend ordering more than you need. Since they combine the bulb with the fixture, I wanted to make sure our future replacement bulbs would match. I didn’t want to have to replace four bulbs in a few years when there’s just one dud. Keeping matching spares on hand seems smart, just in case I can’t find identical units in the future!