Install Retrofit LED Recessed Lights

Hey what’s up? You guys it’s, Ccott, with everyday home repairs, and today I’m, going to quickly walk you through the two main things to consider when you’re, looking to replace old recessed cam lights like this, with a new Led trim kit, cam lights, come in 4 5 and six inch diameters with the most common, usually in your area, being six inches to get this measurement, all you need to do is pull down the trim kit, so you can see the actual diameter of the can And then using a tape measure just measure the diameter, and then you’ll, see if it matches up to four five or six inches.

Additionally, one thing i would really look out for is how large of a of a diameter was the trim piece itself. Why would you do this? Because if someone has painted your ceiling over time and painted over the trim kit, there’s, most likely old paint or just a more worn out surface underneath the existing trim piece.

So if you get a smaller trim piece, then you’re, going to have a very noticeable outline on the outer ring of your new trim piece. This is going to be undesirable and to fix that you might have to repair the popcorn on your ceiling or the knock down texture on your ceiling or even paint.

And if you don’t know the specific paint you have obviously matching that up. Can be a challenge? So not only are you looking at the can diameter, but also the existing trim piece diameter to try to get as big or a little bit larger to ensure that it covers the surface and hides any imperfections in your ceiling.

Second, you’re, going to be wanting to know what features you’re actually looking for, because there are many types of led trim kits that you can buy. What do we mean by features? So a feature might be something like this.

One that has a directional gimbal attached to it. You’ll, find these often by fireplaces, so you might be casting two lights or one light to the mantle of the fireplace. So if you want that ability to direct the light and then not just have it cast straight down, then you need to get one that has that directional gimbal built in and they are readily available.

You just need to make sure you’re. Getting the right one now it used to be that you needed to match up the actual light color to what you were looking for, and this is measured by a kelvin scale. It usually ranges from about 24 to 2700 kelvin, all the way up to the 5 000 range, 24 to 2700 kelvin being a warm uh, a warmer light similar to an incandescent, bulb all the way up to the 5000 or 6000 kelvin range.

That would be like daylight. Usually, the recommendations would be to keep in the 3000 kelvin range for your living spaces, such as bedrooms and living rooms, and then maybe go up to a little bit brighter to the 4000 kelvin range for things like bathrooms and kitchens, where it’s.

Handy to be able to see a little bit more detail because you’re cooking or you’re, doing your makeup or whatever that is in the kitchen or bathroom the nice thing. Now you can find many different types of led lights that actually have adjustable kelvin scales built in so you actually don’t need to pick.

You can bring it home and adjust it from 2700 kelvin up to 5000 and really see what fits your needs and even change that over time. If you feel it it actually, doesn’t fit the space whale and maybe it uh.

Maybe it conflicts with another light fixture you have, that is more like 2700 kelvin and you have a set to 4000 or 5000 and it just doesn’t. Look very good. Now i’ll jump in and show you how quickly you can install these lights like the one behind me.

They only take a couple minutes per fixture and you’re, looking at a cost about 10 to 15 dollars, depending on where you get them and how much you buy if you buy in bulk. Obviously that lowers the cost per fixture.

You can jump down in the description and i’ll. I’ll, put a link to specifically the commercial electric type that i was using and this one that i’m holding in my hands about a twenty dollars per, because it actually has a built-in night light, which is a cool feature.

Especially for hallways, you flip the light switch once the light comes on. You flip it a second time within a certain time period and then switch and switches to a night light mode kind of cool. So let’s, jump in and show you how to install an led, recessed light kit starting off.

We’ll, remove our old light bulb and then focus on the trim piece itself. Applying some pressure or pulling the trim piece down do be careful because the paint from your ceiling could be attached to the trim kit.

So with a razor knife or a flathead screwdriver, you’ll want to break that loose to avoid any damage to the ceiling itself. Then, once you get pulled down, you’ll press the little spring clips in and remove the light socket.

Now you’ll screw in the pigtail that comes with the kit, set the led light to the correct color that you want and then plug it into the light socket pigtail and now. This is probably the toughest part of the whole project, and that is getting the springs to line up to the housing for the can light.

Take your time and work them in and then don’t forget to tuck the socket and the pigtail up in the can before you try to start pressing the led light up into place so work it in place, get it set test it out And that’s, all there is to it seriously.

That is all there is to installing these led recessed light kits bang for the buck. I mean you can do them super fast and, like i said 10 to 15 dollars per unless you get some of those additional features.

You can even get speakers built into these and put them in your shower. So there’s, a ton of different features out there, but if you want to know exactly which one i got, you can look down in the description and you ‘