Rethinking the Track Lighting
Last December I wrote I Can Haz Gorgeous Parlor where I talked about the excitement of one day getting to the point when we can actually enjoy our parlor. I wrote about getting the vintage 1870s plaster medallion restoration completed and installed, along with getting our gorgeous vintage crystal chandelier hung. I also wrote about our plan to use a then yet to be determined dark color on the walls and ceiling. Tucked in that post was a paragraph about how I planned to install track lighting around the perimeter of the room to highlight our art. That was the plan… In December.
In January, I posted my ambitious list of goals for 2019 followed up with my lengthy search for the perfect color for the parlor walls only to discover it wasn’t what I expected. Two days after my reveal post, my Mom passed unexpectedly and life turned upside down. Unsurprisingly, I found myself a bit lost. I returned home from California and focused on getting the floor replaced in the half-bath, which I accomplished by the end of February. Then March and April flew by like a flash. I did my lengthy post: Demystifying the LED Bulb (in conjunction with the podcast), which was prompted in part by my in-depth search for the perfect LED track lighting solution for lighting our art.
[Image: This is what most people think of when the term track lighting is mentioned… Don’t worry, I would never do this. Source: Native Girl Designs]
Back to the search… I was initially planning to install standard track, and purchase LED track heads from a big box store. But the more I researched, the less I was loving my options. While there has been an explosion of new LED integrated track heads made available, most of them are either ugly as sin, far too bright, and/or vague on details. The lower cost ones ($20-$35) claimed to be ‘warm white’ but they didn’t list the color temperature (Kelvins) which is a no-go for me. There were a few attractive models in the $35 to $60 range, but they were all 3,000K, which is just a tiny bit too cool for me. I would much prefer 2,700K because just that little hint of additional warmth can make or break a space. [If what I just wrote about Kelvins makes no sense, no worries… It is all explained in my Demystifying the LED Bulb post.]
Then as I was looking at a track head online, an item in the ‘Related Items’ section at the bottom of the page caught my eye. It was not at all related to track lighting… But it was interesting nonetheless.
Now before I reveal any details, I must say this…. I LOATHE pot-lights!!! Particularly in old houses. It looks weird and it’s just plain wrong! Nothing ruins the look of a historic space more than recessed lighting. Used in moderation in new construction, they are fine, but not in an old house. But then I clicked on the ‘related’ LED light fixture.
[Image: This house was built in the 1870s, but the only thing that would tell you that is the original banister and newel post. Aside from there being too many pot-lights, the color temperature of them is on the cold side. Not really a place to feel warm and cozy in IMHO. Source: Zillow ]
I cannot tell you how many times I have seen 140+ year old houses in my neighborhood which have been gutted, open planned (to the point of absurdity), and filled with sheetrock and cheap engineered floors. Nearly every original detail being stripped away or reduced to a caricature of its former self. To add to this travesty, so many of these houses are filled with an ocean of recessed lighting front to back. Not just a few, I am talking dozens upon dozens, like a doctors office. Even worse is that they choose a cool color temperature (like 5,000K) turning their home into a morgue.
The house pictured above is on the market in my area and looking through the pictures, I counted nearly 30 pot-lights on the first floor alone. There were also at least four pot-lights in each bedroom, a half dozen lining the hallway, and more in the bathrooms and basement. Seriously, who wants to live in that much light?
[Image: This tiny recessed gimbal light puts out a generous amount of light in a tiny package. Source: Nicor Lighting]
It’s also 2,700K (perfect), has a CRI of 90+ (excellent), and produces an ample 356 lumens using only 4.8 watts (and it dims down to 5% – Amazing)! It’s also a ‘gimbal’ fixture which means I can tilt it to point towards the wall to light the art, not the floor, and adjust the direction of the beam of light. And…. at $40 each, it is quite comparable to LED track heads, plus there is no track to buy. Whats not to love!
It’s perfect!…. Well, except for the fact I LOATHE pot-lights.
[Image: Side view of the tiny integrated LED Gimbal light. Source: Nicor Lighting]
Setting aside years and years of loathing pot-lights, I decided to order one of these adorable little integrated LED recessed lights to see for myself. I figured I would do a mock up and see how it looks in the room. I also had to get Y onboard because he is also not a fan of recessed lighting. It was a special order from the big-box, but it only took a few days… And look!
[Image: This fixture that did not exist at this price point only a few short years ago.]
[Image: My mock up with the gimbal recessed light and a 1974 quarter for comparison.]
[Image: My helpful husband stood at the top of a ladder and held this up for me to get an idea of how it will look. Thanks Y!]
Fingers are crossed that we don’t hate them and that we don’t end up just like our neighbors with our own ocean of recessed lighting. I am (mostly) confident that the small size will minimize their impact and look forward to getting them installed in June.
Hey!… Have you heard about the podcast True Tales from Old Houses?!? Stacy Grinsfelder from Blake Hill House blog started it last fall and I have recently joined as a co-host. As noted in my post, our last episode (#8): “Devyn Knows A Thing or Two About Light Bulbs“, Stacy and I cover in more detail the topic of my post: Demystifying the LED bulb. You can find and download us on your favorite podcast app. We would love it if you’d subscribe and give it a review.
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The comparatively small diameter of the lights you propose makes them more palatable than the larger versions of yesteryear. I’m not nearly the rabid purist that I once was, but still cringe a little at any number of invasive lights in old plaster ceilings.
Track lighting offers two advantages over recessed LED: 1) The lights are mobile and more adjustable than recessed lights. 2) They do not require lots of holes punched into the plaster and lath nor a greater amount of wiring snaked through the ceiling (often a problem depending upon the direction of your ceiling joists).
I wish you had written your post on demystifying the LED bulb last year (before I committed to the fixtures now installed at our project house). What we ended up with will work, but I might have done some things differently based on the information you presented. There are still too many of these lights in the kitchen, but that was the home owner’s desire and out of my hands.
Your mock-up of the future installation really helps to visualize the end result. I think it will be both elegant and a bit mysterious — a very good combination of qualities!
Thanks AO!
Very true about the advantages of track lighting, but the visual clutter bothers me still. To minimize the impact, I am looking into painting the outer ring of these tiny lights to match the ceiling color. That will help during the day when there is more light in the room. At night, they will all but vanish except for the spots of light. Because I can dim them down to 5%, they shouldn’t over-light the room like most recessed lighting does.
My solution for installation will involve using a tile hole saw to cut the 2″ holes into the plaster ceiling after ensuring location and ensuring there are no floor joists in the way. This is fairly easy to determine because much of the floorboards above are face nailed. As for the electrical… I plan to pull a single row of floorboards upstairs, drill holes in the joists for the wiring, and use a fish-tape to hook everything up. I plan to blog about this process, and hope to do this in June. This needs to be done before I can start the master bath because of the location of them.
The mock up was worth the effort of priming and painting a scrap of plywood to get a feel for it. Standing on the floor, they are really tiny, and I think I can live with that.
I’ve had it in my head to do a post on LEDs for a couple of years, it was a matter of sitting down and putting it all together. I’ll admit to spending far more hours than usual on that post, but I wanted to try and make it understandable for the layman. I am guessing your issue at the project house is related to color temperature? I don’t even know why they sell the colder blueish lighting to the general public, they are fine for commercial use, but make much less sense in the home. Unfortunately, there is little out there to educate folks.
And yes, I too cringe at the sight of interrupted plaster ceilings, even for such mundane things as smoke detectors. But I will acquiesce for the sake of compromise because in the bigger picture, I will have superior lighting for the artwork with less visual clutter.
I also hate recessed lights and vowed to never have them in my house. I read blog posts about how to layer lighting in a room and how many fixtures a kitchen needs and I look at my kitchen with it’s two essentially bare bulbs (there is a glass shade but both point down) and don’t understand how I need more light – we don’t even turn on the nook light. But then I learned about these tiny and very shallow LED recessed lights and it had me thinking about the lighting in our attic. There is very little clearance for heads since it is an attic and currently had two bulbs that hang down on cloth wires. The roof rafters are only 2×4 so there isn’t hardly room for a standard electrical box but I think i might be okay with a few of these LED recessed lights to replace the swinging bulbs and of course lamps will likely be used most of the time.
Like you said, these weren’t even an option a few years ago – it’s crazy that new technology can bring new things to the market so quickly.
Thats awesome you came up with a different use! I’m glad my post was there to help! 😉😉
One of the joys (and agony’s) of old house living are the quirks like low attic ceilings with hanging bulbs. That would certainly not pass muster in the modern world. There are all sorts of recessed integrated LED lights out now. The ones I am using are more focused and adjustable, but you might be just fine with a small general lighting fixture (at half the price) like this: 3″ White Integrated LED Color Selectable Recessed Downlight [Note: I am not promoting Home Depot, just happens to be where I find a good selection.]
Great find. They look amazing. I used something similar years ago for exactly the same use but at four times the price (I call it the early adopter surcharge). My experience was mixed. Some of them did not hold their adjustment (angle) possibly because there was not enough slack in the wiring. Generally, the wiring is heavier than the angle adjustment mechanism appears to expect. Something to consider if the angle of light is key to your use. I managed a workaround with a piece of matchstick of all things. Necessity is the mother of invention!
Thanks for stopping by Gary, Small units indeed have been around for a few years, but at much higher prices… That is part of what makes these little guys so remarkable. As for the gimbal action, these are quite good, I am quite impressed with the quality. I researched the manufacturers (Nicor Lighting) and they have been in the business of commercial lighting since the 1980s.
And yes, necessity is the mother of invention. 😊
It is all about the balance!!! Love those tiny track lights!!
[…] to make a stand for why track lighting was the right choice, I questioned that choice all along. Then I found my lighting solution in the even more dreaded, but in this case, better choice of recessed lighting, albeit tiny two […]
You haz gorgeous art.