How to do spotlights

Our take, in brief

Less is more.
Use wide-angle bulbs for task lighting. Use narrow-beam ones for atmosphere.
Light the area around seating but not the seats themselves.
Warm white bulbs are a must.
Put everything on dimmers.

Why surface-mounted?

Firstly, unlike spotlights that are recessed into your ceiling, you can angle them pretty much anywhere. That means you can be really specific about where you do and don’t light (more on that below).

You can also install some surface-mounted spots on beams and walls. This is great if you have very tall ceilings and want to bring the lights down lower.

Let’s talk about bulbs

The most important thing for us was that our spotlights and bulbs are separate.

Yes, LEDs last ages, but not as long as the light will. It’s bad for the planet and your wallet to have to throw the whole thing away just because the bulb’s gone.

And they’re warm white. We’ve found that 2,700K is the sweet spot between too cold and too warm. It’s about the same as a traditional incandescent bulb.

Wide vs. narrow

Our bulbs come in 12° (narrow) and 24° (wide-ish) beam sizes.

The wider 24° ones are great for areas where you need more light for tasks, like in a kitchen shining over the worktop or an island. They’re still actually narrower than the standard though to give you more control.

The 12° bulbs are the ones we’d use to create atmosphere. They only light a small area so you can use them to highlight furniture, art and architecture while avoiding seating and that uncomfortable feeling of sitting under a spotlight.

Because they’re really specific, the adjustability of surface-mounted spots is a must with 12° bulbs.

In rooms like kitchen-diners that need to be practical sometimes and atmospheric at others, we’d use both. Wire them up on different circuits and you can go from one mood to the other at the flick of a switch.

Dimmable

We’d always suggest putting your spots on dimmers. It gives you a lot more control and you’ll be more likely to use them.

We’d also suggest using retractive switches to dim.

These look exactly like normal switches, so it’s a sleeker option.

You can also use as many of them on one circuit as you need.

Rotary dimmers (the standard type with a knob you turn around to dim) are two-way, which means if you want more than two to control a circuit, you need to add an intermediate switch and these only do on and off.

Retractive switches are most useful in large spaces where you can install them in several locations to dim your spotlights without crossing the room.

Published on 2nd October 2024