Warning: if you are currently renovating or building (congrats), do not just Google info about can lights, or rely on most contractors (no offense). I think we’ve all seen egregious can light crimes (which are almost impossible to change after the fact without serious ceiling and electrical deconstruction). You have one shot to get the placement and amount right, when your ceilings are open, before you finish drywall or, in our case, paneling (no pressure), otherwise back to the construction phase. I have a lot to say about can lights – warnings, learnings, anecdotes, and recommendations. But first… 

“Can lights” are a type of “recessed light,” which is the broader category of lights that sit flush in a ceiling – the two words are used pretty interchangeably. Can lights aren’t most designers’ favorite type of lighting because the older ones can be eyesores – they are huge (6+ inches), bulbous (like an eyeball), oddly placed (not in a row, often random), and all those things can scream cheap construction, which is what makes a room look dated fast. And listen, some are cheap (some being much cheaper than others).

My Personal Experience With Can Lights

But there are good ones out there, and sometimes they are the best solution to lighting a room. For instance, I don’t mind them in our more minimal mountain house where we used 4″ white round ones that just disappear into the ceiling, minimally placed, and are on a dimmer. The ceilngs are low and I like how streamlined it looks. We also have them in our farmhouse kitchen (4″ square), placed for cooking and cleaning as support to our pendants and sconces (and in the winter we definitely need them).

Below, I started ranting about can lights – all my thoughts I would tell someone in person if they were asking, so I’m putting what appears to be my extreme can-light passion into numbered points here:

1. The reason cans can be so good is that the spread of the light is wide and even (generally untrue of a spotlight, in my experience, although track-lights can work, but very style specific). They can really light an entire room evenly, should that be your goal.
2. I personally don’t love the 10 flushmount or semi-flushmount look (not to mention that being much more expensive), so if you don’t have a tall enough ceiling for a multi-bulb chandelier, then your options, if you want a lot of light, are what? 10 brass spotlights? Good luck cleaning in the winter!
3. For most rooms, I prefer a pretty ceiling fixture (chandelier or a pendant/s), with a couple of wall sconces (when possible) – these are the pretty fixtures. But then I like it when these are supported by some overhead, minimally and evenly placed, small can lights. THERE I SAID IT. I like to see when I want to see!!!
4. I don’t love cans in older plaster ceilings.
5. What about wood ceilings? Well, in my brother’s house we chose not to interrupt the wood ceiling with black cans (I was team can, BTW) so we did less lighting, choosing some pretty spotlights in their bedroom, and you know what? He wishes he had more lighting in that room and in the kitchen. We fought and lost that battle, and now they have to live with it.
6. I prefer small, square housing (4″), and I like black cans on a dark ceiling and white on a light ceiling – see our current family room ceiling. Although a minimal round one is fine, too!
7. I mostly choose function but over fashion (barely), and it’s all a personal preference (some rooms I don’t care about as much, functionally, and will choose the better design and skip the can lights).
8. Vintage style homes want fewer can lights (they are era-specific, so use where you need, but not everywhere).
9. And while I personally have never ever requested photoshopping out can lights in any of our projects, many a photographer has taken liberty to do so on our behalf, which is frustrating because then the rest of us on the internet never know where to place these GD cans!! (You won’t see them in a magazine, ever – admittedly, they can ruin the shot!).
10. Be very very careful to place a can light over something unless it’s in line with the others and makes sense with the overall ceiling pattern – i.e., don’t just do a constellation pattern in a kitchen to light the sink. At minimum, keep it symmetrical and balanced (not a random eyeball by the pantry on a diagonal). 

See? I have a LOT to say about can lights.

In today’s case, in this garage we need ample lighting in the winter, but we couldn’t have pendants due to the mechanism of the garage doors (pendants would hang down and the door would hit them). And living in an northern state we can’t always just rely on those cute/sweet spotlights that don’t do the job after 4 pm (I’d love to know if anyone has a recommendations for a spotlight that does create enough light – I think it’s a designer conspiracy theory to get us all to use them, but I have it on good record that they don’t create enough actual light to live!).

OMG I’VE GOT TO GET TO THE POINT. That’s all to say I had to figure out on my own (oof) how many can lights for our studio garage, how far apart they should be, how big they should be, and what wattage/lumens they should be (without anyone to help me). NO THANK YOU, SIR. In this space, can lights were the only real option that made sense – so what do I do????

Decision One: How Many Can Lights For This Room?

If you Google “how many can lights for a room that is 22×21” (our size), it says, “16 – 24 CAN LIGHTS”. LOLOL. That’s disgusting. Not only would this look so dumb, it would be so bright it would be annoying to live in (true story – my brother’s garage is over-lit and it’s annoyingly bright in there). I’m not performing surgery, folks! Of course, this depends on your lumens and personal preferences (perhaps you are a garage surgeon?)

For this room (22’x21′), my brother and Nick recommended between 9-12, but even 12 felt like a lot. I ended up choosing 9 lights, evenly spaced 6′ apart (technically 6′ left to right, 7′ front to back since it wasn’t a perfect square). This also might have to do with your ceiling framing and where your beams are (they need to attach to the beams).

I chose these, which are 4″ white square cans. We are VERY VERY happy with them. Now a few things you should know.

4″ isn’t really accurate – the light source is 2.2″ and the overall visible width is 5″. Additionally, these are for a specific type of rough-in that your electrician would need to do (so check with them to make sure that these are compatible). Regardless of the rough-ins, what I like about these is the following, in case you want to find them compatible with your kit:

1. 4″ Inch Square LED Recessed Can Lights
2. 14W=75W (adjustable/dimmable)
3. 5 Color Options 2700K-5000K (2700 is my usual, but 3k in a garage is good – you can always adjust after).
4. 950 Lumens (I don’t really get this, but this is what ours are and I like them)

How Far Apart Should They Be?

Listen, if there are any lighting experts here, please weigh in as I think it’s a formula based on the height of the ceiling, the width of the room, and lumens/wattage. But most importantly, it’s a personal preference which no formula can tell you! We placed our 6′ apart (on center), left to right, and 7′ front to back (consistent with the shape of the room).

At night (which would be before 8 am or after 4 pm in the winter,) there is plenty of light to do our job in here, which again, is NOT surgery or any sort of lab work. It’s a lot of even light without being annoying.

But I was nervous that choosing only 9 for the whole room and choosing the smallest 4″ cans (which is very small). Would this be a mistake? So I did an experiment – in the other garage, that is purely storage, I decided to amp it up, see if more would be too much or better.

Now we haven’t shot this yet (it’s done but full of stuff you can’t see yet), but this is what the other garage looked like after they installed them. I had to make the decisions at the same time for both garages. This garage is bigger, 25×21, so just in case I was wrong about the first garage, we installed 12 cans in here, of the bigger 6″ size (same specs). We chose these, which were the same, just 2″ bigger and a little cheaper.

And you know what? The 6″ cans look fine in here! I think that 9 would have not been enough, but the 12 fits great and it is definitely enough light for us. But I guess what I’m saying is that had we done 6″ in our prop studio garage, it would have likely been fine. We also could have probably done 12 in the smaller prop garage without it being annoying, but the 16-24 would have been insane. We are very happy with both, having done far less than “recommended,” which is a great example that your personal preference should always come first (it’s just scary when you don’t want to have regrets later because you can’t see).

I’d love for people with experience to weigh in in the comments to help others trying to make this decision. My main beef with this conversation is that it seems to me that designers don’t want to put them in their clients’ homes, because designers don’t like them, but we never hear from the clients whether they have enough light in the winter. Do any pretty spotlights really give enough ample light? I know that if we didn’t have cans in our bedroom, kitchen, and family room, I would be frustrated a few times a week (not all the time and not in the summer, but definitely in the winter when I want to clean or look for something).

Opening Image Credits: Photo by Kaitlin Green | From: My New Prop Garage Reveal – Including IKEA Shelving (Non-Spon) And A Lot Of Vintage Collections