installing can lights.
So let me start this post off by saying that I'm not super great with electrical work, but luckily my dad is.
The first rule of any electrical work is MAKE SURE YOUR BREAKER IS TURNED OFF. In our case, we have been demo-ing a lot of outlets and such so we had an open breaker that already had wire running to where we needed it.
However, if you were starting from scratch, you'd have to start by exposing your electrical panel and being sure that you have an open fuse. You'd get a fuse and install that in the panel. This is where you'd install the wire to feed in your ceiling to power all of your lights. Typically you can put around 10 lights on each fuse. In my case I'm doing 8 can lights & 2 ceiling fans.
The very first step is to lay out your lights. My advice is to take your room and divide it up to decide where you want your lights to be.
Our room was 19 feet wide, so we decided we wanted our rows of of lights and fans to be 56" apart. We measured this and popped three lines across the ceiling. One for each of the rows of can lights and one for the two fans. This ensured that all of the lights were in a row and looked night. Our room was 29 feet long so we decided to put lights every 70". I got this measurement by taking 29 feet and dividing it by 5-- this is because I want FOUR lights evenly spaced in the room. Then, starting at the wall I measured over every 70" and put a mark.
At Lowe's we were able to buy a 6" drill bit that is specially made for cutting the holes in the drywall. you put the center of the bit on your mark and it turns to cut your hole to set the can light into.
The can lights are pretty much idiot proof. You stick the metal circle part into the hole you've already cut in your drywall & install the legs with screws into your ceiling joists.
I purchased these because they're very user-friendly. You literally just stick the wires into the color coded wiring connector.
So, the wiring. Like I said, we already had a wire running from our panel to use as our "main feed" -- if you don't have that, you'll have to add a breaker and create a main feed.
From that feed you need to run a wire to a new junction box. In that junction box, you'll have the wire for your switch connected in. That will run down through the wall to wherever you want your switch to be.
You will then run wire from this box to your first can light. Stick the wires in the color coded slots.
Take a second piece of wire & stick one end in the color coded slots of that can light and run it to your next light.
Continue this step until you've connected all of your lights that you want controlled by the switch.
For our fans, we used a pancake box which we marked in the ceiling and cut out of the drywall. Our wires went into this pancake box & were capped off to install the fans. Each fan is on it's own switch. Therefore, there is power coming to the junction box, and wire going off of that to go to the switch.
If you're smart about it, and know how to install a breaker, installing can lights is fairly simple.
xoxo Gabrielle