Residential electrical · Belleville & Quinte
Lighting and Pot Light Installation
LED retrofits, pot light installs, under-cabinet, exterior and landscape lighting. Priced per fixture so you can see what you are buying.
Real room, lights on, no showhome staging
What we install
Pot lights — recessed ceiling lights, in kitchens, living rooms, basements and hallways. The most requested job on this page by a wide margin.
LED retrofits — replacing old fluorescent tubes or incandescent fixtures throughout a house, usually a basement or a garage first.
Under-cabinet lighting — the single highest-value lighting change in most kitchens, because it puts light where you are actually working instead of behind you.
Exterior lighting — soffit lights, entry and porch fixtures, motion-sensor security lighting, garage and driveway lighting.
Landscape lighting — low-voltage runs for paths, trees and garden beds.
Fixture replacement — chandeliers, pendants, ceiling fans, bathroom vanity lights. Including the ones where the existing box will not take the weight, which is more of them than people think.
Switching and dimming — three-way switches, dimmers matched to LED fixtures, and separating a room that is currently all on one switch into something usable.
Layout matters more than fixture choice
The most common thing we are asked to fix is lighting that was installed correctly and laid out badly.
Six pot lights in a straight line down the middle of a kitchen ceiling puts light on the floor and your own shadow on the counter. The lights work perfectly. The kitchen is still badly lit.
So before anything gets cut we walk the room with you and talk about what you actually do in it — where you chop, where you read, where you watch television, which corner is always dark. Then we mark the ceiling and you look at it before a single hole is made.
That conversation takes twenty minutes and it is the difference between lighting you like and lighting you put up with for fifteen years.
Local note — needs client input
A real local job with photos: a Belleville kitchen or basement, the fixture count, the layout, the final price. Lighting is the one service on this site where a photograph does more selling than any paragraph, so this is the page to prioritise when the client starts collecting images.
What it costs
$135 to $220 per pot light, installed, including the fixture.
The spread is mostly about access:
- Open ceiling — a basement being finished, or a room stripped for renovation. Bottom of the range and sometimes below it.
- Attic above — a bungalow, or the top floor of a two-storey. Straightforward, middle of the range.
- Finished space above — a first-floor ceiling with bedrooms over it. Top of the range, because every cable run is fished blind.
- Plaster and lath — add to whatever the above would have been.
The first light on a new circuit always costs more than the ones after it, because the first one includes getting power to the room. Twelve lights in one room is much better value per light than three lights in four rooms.
Other work on this page
- Fixture swap, existing box — usually $135 to $200, more for a heavy fixture on a high ceiling
- Under-cabinet run — depends on cabinet layout and where the power comes from
- Exterior fixture, existing location — from $150
- New exterior circuit with GFCI — quoted per job
- Dimmer, matched to LEDs — usually added to another job rather than booked alone
Do it in the right order
If a room is being renovated, get the lighting in while the ceiling is open. The same twelve pot lights can cost half as much in an open ceiling as they do six weeks later in a finished one.
And if you are having any other work done that opens walls — a panel upgrade, a rewire, an EV charger run — mention the lighting then. Doing both trips at once saves you a call-out and saves us a setup.
Common questions
How many pot lights does a room need?
Fewer than most quotes suggest. A rough starting point is one every four to five feet, set about two to three feet off the walls, adjusted for ceiling height and what the room is for. A kitchen wants light on the counters, not on the middle of the floor. A living room usually wants less overhead light and more lamps than people expect. We will lay it out with you before we cut anything, because the layout is the part you live with.
Will you have to cut up my ceiling?
Each light needs a hole, and there is normally an access hole every few feet for pulling cable. Modern shallow LED fixtures need far less clearance than the old cans, which makes them much easier to fit into an existing ceiling. In a bungalow with attic space above we can usually do it with only the fixture holes. Under a second storey it is more involved, and we will say so before you commit.
Are pot lights allowed in an insulated ceiling?
The fixture has to be rated for direct contact with insulation — IC rated — and, where the ceiling is the air barrier to an unheated attic, it also needs to be airtight so you are not venting heat and moisture upward. Older non-rated cans in an insulated ceiling are a real problem and we see plenty of them. Everything we fit is rated for where it goes.
Can I keep my existing dimmers?
Usually not, and this is the most common complaint after a DIY LED swap. Old dimmers were designed for incandescent bulbs and LEDs on them buzz, flicker, or refuse to dim below half. An LED-compatible dimmer matched to the fixtures fixes it. It is a small part and it makes the difference between lighting you like and lighting you tolerate.
What about outdoor and landscape lighting?
Yes to both. Exterior work needs weather-rated fixtures, weather-rated boxes and GFCI protection, and any buried run has to be at the correct depth in the correct cable. Low-voltage landscape lighting is a different and simpler job — a transformer and a buried run at low voltage — and it is often the better answer for a garden.
Related work and reading
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