Yesterday we went to home depot to pick up some stuff for the bathroom sink, and since he couldn't find what he needed there to install the sink, M. moved on to his next project, overhead lighting. After a few sexist comments from the salesperson about how pregnant ladies have the easy job of lying on the couch and snuggling the baby, we picked up all of the stuff we needed, came home, moved a freezer into the basement (take that, salesguy) and I turned 12 lbs of tomatoes into sauce while M. disappeared upstairs. I eventually went to bed, and this morning, I woke up to overhead lighting in the office.
We opted for four inch LED halo fixtures. This is the part where I should tell you all about what we installed, how we installed it, etc. but this is my blog and I didn't do any of the actual work. So, marry a person who can install overhead lighting and then go to bed. That is how you do this. The only two parts I "helped" with (besides finding the correct little pieces in the tiny piece aisle at Home Depot) were picking out the 4 inch halo fixtures (which are listed for accent or task lighting, but the ceiling in this room is pretty low, and the room is pretty tiny) and offering my opinion on which tiles should get the lights inserted in them.
The reason it was a question of tiles is because the housings needed to have three inches of clearance between them and the insulation, and as you get further back in the room, the insulation is closer and closer to the tiles. Even though the housings were not LED specific, so that recommendation was probably excessive for LEDs. But fire safety is important, so all of the housings went towards the front of the room where they had 3". The desk might still require a task light but we have a few of those to spare.
For reference, we got Halo fittings - a standard incandescent housing (H99TAT) because it's what they had in the store (just requires threading a bulb adapter into the socket before installing the LED) and I think these LED modules - RL460WH835. The color is a bit white for my taste, if there had been a clear range of choices available on the shelf I would have gone for a lower color temperature like 2700K or 3000K. The housings clip over the T-bars of the drop ceiling so all I had to do was cut out the tiles and wire everything to the switch.
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