It took me about 25 minutes to install a new LED light fixture in my bedroom walk-in closet.
I’ve been converting each of the fixtures in my house to LED lighting over the past few months. Lower electricity bills. Less maintenance. And crisp, clean light. This closet, though? This closet had the original fixture from my son’s ‘race car’ room from when he was 6 years old. Yup… for the past 10 years, we’ve been dressing under the dim light of a NASCAR fixture. Complete with a ‘bug murder and corpse collection’ feature. Can you see the bugs at the bottom of the fixture in the photo below?
(We have a zero-tolerance for bugs here – and a policy for dressing under only the coolest recycled light fixtures!)
But I figured it was time to level-up a bit now. I mean, we got our money’s worth out of our NASCAR fixture. And many bugs paid the ‘ultimate price’ for us…
LED Fixture Installation: Tools & Materials
When I say this took about 25 minutes, I’m even including the time to get the tools and ladder from the garage.
Here’s what I gathered and used for the entire job:
- A new no-frills LED Light Fixture (‘Zillions’ of options on Amazon)
- A Portable Lantern (As you may be working in the dark)
- A Ladder
- A Phillips and a Straight screwdriver
- A wire stripper (You may not even need it)
- A wire cutter (You may not even need it)
You can see most of these items in the 2 photos below – everything but the ladder…
LED Fixture Installation: Preparation
Turn the electricity off. That’s pretty much it.
Or, if you’re not comfortable with electrical work, please get a local handyperson (‘handyman’ seems sexist) or a licensed electrician to come over and do this for you. This will be easy for them. The links I just included will let you very-easily find one near you. I’d only suggest if you have this done by a contractor, you may want to have several light fixtures available for them to tackle with one visit – so you make the most of their house call. So you get the most for your money.
LED Fixture Installation: Finally…
With the power off, I remove my old light fixture – two screws…
Every one of the new LED fixtures I’ve installed the past few weeks has come with a mounting bar or a mounting bracket. Follow your manufacturer’s instructions to install this, of course. You can see the plastic mounting bracket from my new LED fixture now installed below.
Again – two screws…
If your fixture comes with a heat temperature setting – select the ‘warmth’ you like. I purchased this LED fixture with 3 options, and I personally prefer 2700-3000K. The higher numbers are too much like office lighting to me. And the lower numbers are too much like ‘mood’ lighting.
My closet isn’t where I work or host romantic, candlelight dinners.
So for me, I select the 3000K setting – which is the middle setting via the switch you see I’ve called out below. But choose what looks best to you!
Connect your wires, via the manufacturer’s instructions. They might provide a custom connector (as you see in the shot above) or you might just use the good ole’ wire nuts that were probably already there when you removed the original fixture.
Not sure what wire nuts are? They’re these things…
Then affix your LED fixture to the mounting bracket or bar. Mine twists onto the bracket for this unit, and I have to take some care to avoid pinching the wires.
And that’s a wrap. Well, except for my latest VERY interesting discovery – from 2 days ago…
Stadium LED Lighting for my Basement?
So, closets aside – I’ve been working on a small music area in my basement.
It’s kinda dark down there, though – and I wanted to add some additional LED lighting. I just found (and bought) this LED fixture shown below on my kitchen table.
I got this for $21.99 – which blew my mind, as it’s spec’d at 8000 Lumens, which means – it should output the lighting equivalent of about six 100 Watt bulbs. (Using only 80W of electrical power in total.) The other thing that’s REALLY interesting… note the base: it simply screws into an existing fixture. As a light bulb would. No wiring. No tools. Nothing needed… other than a ladder.
Could this be too good to be true? Might I install it in ~30 seconds to find the basement is so bright that we all burn (or perhaps slowly tan)? Can I use a fixture like this to light a future baseball field or tennis court in my backyard? All good questions. I don’t know yet – I’ll try later today. But very interesting, indeed!
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