Where To Place Recessed Lighting in the Living Room for the Best Look and Feel

Gone are the days of distracting ceiling light fixtures taking up half of your living room. With its versatility and polished look, recessed lighting is a popular option for living rooms. Making a thoughtful layout plan means getting the most from your recessed lighting. Use these expert tips to learn where to place recessed lighting in your living room.

Why Use Recessed Lighting in Your Living Room?

Designed to sit flush with your ceiling, so all the wires and components are hidden away, recessed lights can add a sleek and streamlined finish to your living room. Available in a variety of sizes and trim styles, recessed lighting in your living room can illuminate large spaces without drawing attention away from your home decor.

You can also use it to highlight certain areas or decorations, such as:

• Fireplaces

• Family photos

• Entertainment areas

• Bookshelves

Determine Your Lighting Purpose

The first step in planning your recessed lighting layout is determining the overall purpose of your fixtures. Doing so allows you to get a better sense of important details such as the type of housing, housing size, trim styles, and more.

In most living rooms, for example, recessed lighting is used to provide bright and even light across the entire room. You can have additional or overlapping goals for your lighting as well, such as narrow and focused light to highlight bookcases, art, or other accents. A local light fixture contractor can also make recommendations for the needs of your space.

Put Your Plan on Paper: Sketch It Out

Get your pencil and notepad out, and sketch your living room. You don’t have to be exact, but your sketch should generally represent the room’s dimensions. Include any windows, doors, or other sources of natural light. Take note of any areas where you plan to spend the most time as well as any accents you want to highlight, and include these areas in your sketch with approximate measurements. 

Determine Focal Points

Determining the focal points of your living room tells you approximately where your recessed lighting should be. Focal points are usually where you’ll spend most of your time, and in living rooms, that area typically includes the main seating area.

Include these lighting needs in your sketch where you already noted the corresponding area, including over couches, armchairs, coffee tables, fireplaces, or other furniture. If your focal points include any accents, include those lights as well.

Calculating Light Spacing

Keep in mind that focal points aren’t necessary. If you don’t want to highlight or focus on a specific area, you can opt for even lighting. There are a few ways to achieve even lighting in your living room. The general rule to find how far apart your lights should be is to divide the height of the ceiling by two, with the result being how far your lights should be spaced apart.

For example, if your living room has a 10-foot ceiling, your recessed lights should be about five feet apart in a grid-like arrangement. If you prefer to not have lights directly over your seating area, you can arrange your lights evenly around the room’s perimeter. Leave about half the spacing amount between the lights and the perimeter, which in this example is 2.5 feet.

Beyond this guideline calculation, a few variables can affect light spacing in your living room. If you have a small living room, for example, you may not even need more than one recessed light to illuminate the entire space. Keep in mind other wall-mounted fixtures in your living room and whether they should or shouldn’t have lights overhead. For instance, a fireplace is a great place for recessed accent lighting, but direct lighting over a wall-mounted TV or projector screen may be distracting.

Number of Lights Needed

Following the standard spacing calculation can give you an approximate number of lights needed. For a living room with a 10-foot ceiling that’s about 20 feet long and 15 feet wide, you’ll need three lights per row along the length and two lights per row along the width to leave 2.5 feet between the lights and the wall. In total, that’s six recessed lights for a 300-square-foot living room.

Consider Other Lighting

Recessed lighting can function as your primary overhead lighting, but layering it with other forms of lighting helps create ambiance in your space without over-illuminating it. To avoid shadows and dark corners and to make your lighting welcoming and relaxing, try mixing up your lighting types to compensate for or complement your recessed lighting layout. In doing so, you may need fewer recessed lights to achieve your desired look.

This can include:

• Other types of ceiling lights, such as chandeliers or pendant lights

• Floor and table lamps to light up dark corners

• Dimmer switches

Variables Affecting Lighting Needs

While the spacing calculation provides a baseline and a rough idea of how many recessed lights you need per room, there’s no magic number of lights for every space. There are a few variables to consider that can help inform how many lights you need and the layout.

These include:

• Bulb type: Lumens and tone can illuminate a space in different ways.

• Size of the room: If your lights have lower or higher lumens, you may need more or fewer lights than the standard calculation.

• Level of desired illumination: For an energized living room, opt for more lights. For a moody living with indirect or accent lighting, opt for fewer lights.

• Type of recessed light: Certain types of recessed lights provide ambient light while others have narrower beams.

• Size of recessed light: The larger the fixture, the wider the wash of light will be.