During the course of May, our team celebrated National Home Remodeling month by doing some simple lighting projects around the house and sharing them with our readers. We called it our “Weekend Warrior” series because all of the projects can be completed in a weekend (or less!).
Project Two – The 1-Hour Project
In my last post I shared how we installed recessed lighting in our bonus room. Once I installed the LED retrofits there, I was hooked on the quality and energy-efficiency of the lighting. I decided to change out our seven 75-watt PAR30 halogen recessed lights in our kitchen with seven LED retrofit modules. The 7 halogen recessed lights used 525 total watts of electricity. By switching to LED retrofit modules I would reduce that wattage use to 87.5 watts! HUGE energy savings! In addition to the LED retrofit modules, I also changed out my dimmer switch to a Lutron Maestro C-L dimmer.
This was one project I was able to very easily do myself. In fact, I finished this one in less than an hour.
Step 1 – Remove the existing 75-watt PAR30 halogen lamp.
Step 2 – Remove the existing recessed baffle trim from the housing.
Step 3 – Screw in the new LED retrofit module.
Step 4 – Rinse and repeat until all 7 lights are completed.
Step 5 – Turn on the lights to make sure they all worked.
Step 6 – Turn off the power to the kitchen, replace the existing dimmer with a new C-L dimmer, turn the power back on. Turn on the lights. Done.
All in all, both of these projects were complete successes. Much better lighting in our bonus room and huge energy savings in our kitchen.
Read all of the posts in our Weekend Warrior series:
- Installing wireless security lighting
- Installing custom battery operated strip lights in a pantry
- Installing a reading light in a book nook
- Installing recessed lights in a bonus room
Hi, I’ve been searching everywhere, and I’ll bet I’ve found the right place. I live in a @1767 home in Massachusetts. The ceiling in the kitchen is very low. When my parents first bought the house, in the 1940’s, my father made recessed boxes and installed three 2′ fluorescent light fixtures.
The light is wretched, as you can imagine, and I’ve hated it for years. Because the ceiling is so low, it would be difficult to have (a) hanging fixture, and it would not be safe to have anything that gets too hot (halogen)– there’s no room for insulation, and the apartment upstairs is JUST above us.
I tried switching out to more modern fluorescent fixtures & bulbs — I now have one each T-5, t-8 & t-12 — They are more energy-efficient, but the color is still pretty bad.
Ever since I first read about LED bulbs, I knew that one day, that would be my solution– but I love the way incandescent light looks and (@2700 K , high CRI index) and I don’t want hi K, low CRI bulbs, LED or not.
Now that “incandescent-like” LED edison bulbs are common, I could pay to have an electrician change out my fixtures, but what I’d really like to do is find 2′ long LED tube lights, 2700k & high CRI. Do you have any idea if anyone is making / selling them?
In general high CRI (80+) 2700K LED replacement bulbs are readily available. With that being said, LED replacement tubes are, in my opinion, still in their infancy. It will be tough to find a 2ft 2700K 80+ CRI LED tube that provides adequate lumen output, mostly because that’s an odd size. We do carry a product I would recommend that is 3500K, which is more neutral than warm. The reason the item is not available in 2700K is because the light quality and output would be quite poor at that color temperature.
https://www.pegasuslighting.com/led-light-bulbs/9w-ballast-compatible-17w-replacement-led-light-bulb-linear-2-foot-t8-tube-83-cri-litetronics.html
Thanks for the reply, sorry to hear that the quality isn’t there yet at my preferred K. Is that a function of the way they make the tube LED lights? because the current class of 2700K edison base LED lights seem fine to me, very close to incandescent quality / experience. I paint, and I just can’t stand the way colder lights make things look.
It’s because fluorescent tubes are really, really efficient and inexpensive and it’s tough for LEDs to exceed that efficiency enough to justify the increased expense. I understand your feelings on the cooler color temperatures.