Can Lights - New Construction and LED Question

I just had 2 installed in my house last week. I knew nothing about what I was doing and went to HD and purchased 2 enclosed new construction cans. They were mispriced at $8 each and I was happy.

After further investigation, I realized I should have bought remodel cans and just called an electrician.

If there is a moral to this story (big if), its to go to HD and hope to find the cans for $8 each.

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After further investigation, I realized I should have bought remodel cans and just called an electrician.

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Those are fairly easy to put in. It is the wiring that can be a pain. I installed 5 in my living room several summers ago. Why I chose July to crawl around in my attic running wire, I still can't recall. But if you have access to do that, the remodel cans are easy to put in. One of these:



A spool of wire, wire strippers, and a screwdriver is all you would need. Took me about 2 hours to do the whole thing.

I have that same set up in my new construction. Nice white light, long life and looks great.

I went totally led with the exception of 3 chandeliers that I will replace with led if possible.

I hate changing bulbs especially in can lights.

The wife called and setup the install. I think that she made it out the be a bigger deal on the phone than it turned out to be. Once they got there, he made several comments about how small and easy of a job it was going to be (none were negative, he was just happy to not have to stay in an attic all day).

Eta: for anyone in BR or the surrounding areas, I highly recommend Cajun Electric. We found them on Angies List and they are great people. We ended up having 3 different guys come out to estimate and then later install and all were good people.

As manager of an electrical contractor we have installed 1000s of LED fixtures from recess cans to pole lights over the last 5-10 years or so.
The light, efficiency, and long life is all great. However we have had issues with some fixtures, even the top of the line stuff. One problem I see is the technology is advancing so fast whats out there today will be obsolete tomorrow. alot of the fixtures, and mostly the residential recess cans are not made to be repaired, once it goes out you replace the whole fixture. So 3 years from now when one fixture fails and you can not get an exact replacement when happens when you have 8-10 or more matching cans in the room, and one you cant match. For that reason I think using standard incandescent recess cans with R30 LED replacement lamps may be the way to go.

crees have a 20 year warranty and the installation takes all of 30 seconds and because the bulb/housing is all-in-one, they look fricking great.

i cringe now when i'm at a friend's house and they have a different bulb in every can.

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. There are some high CRI bulbs that score 93 and looks pretty much like a incandescent bulb.

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thats the score of the cree tw series.

MAKE SURE IT SAYS tw (TRUE WHITE) on the box.

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Trust me don't get any leds with a lower score it's nots a good look IMO. More like cfl

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agree.

however i did take advantage of those $2.50 bulbs home depot and lowes have had recently for attic, garage, etc.

they'll do for now. i'm just sick of always having this or that bulb burn out.

i swear CFLs burn out faster than the old incadescent.

so far LEDs have not let me down..been a thing of beauty.

I just put regular cans in and purchased dimmable LED bulbs from Amazon.

Note the difference between dimmable and non-dimmable LED bulbs. The LED bulbs look like regular flood bulbs. Phillips is the brand, IIRC.