How To Install Canless Recessed Lighting?

Canless recessed lighting is arguably the future of recessed lighting in the home.

It uses LEDs and is super-efficient – low energy bills and a long life span.

But is it more or less difficult to install than traditional canned recessed lighting? Are there any other benefits to it too?

There’s a lot to consider if you’re planning a new lighting installation or considering an upgrade.

Installing canless recessed lighting is relatively simple. Once you’ve fed wiring to the ceiling, just cut the holes for the lights and connect the main cables to the wires in the driver box for the light. Then connect the light to the driver box, and push it into place.

To give you the complete picture, let’s take a look at:

• The main differences between can and canless lighting
• How to fit canless lighting in the ceiling
• How to wire LED canless lights

Main Differences Between Can And Canless Recessed Lights

Canned lighting is where you install a light fixture in the ceiling of your room.

The can is the fixture that will hold the bulb in place.

It’s designed to use regular light bulbs but needs something to plug them into to power them.

But since canned lighting became popular, we now have the option to use LEDs for our lights.

While you can get LED light bulbs, you don’t need a whole chunky bulb – the diodes can work really well flat.

Which led to the invention of canless lighting.

Canless lighting doesn’t need a chunky can to hold the light in place. Instead, it will work as an almost-flat light.

There are a couple of practical benefits to choosing canless lighting. The first is that it’s generally easier to work with.

When you’re at the top of a ladder installing lights, it’s much simpler to hold onto a flat disk than to fit a whole can into the recess you’ve made in the ceiling.

Not only that, but canless lighting gives you more flexibility regarding where the light can live.

Can lights need the room in the ceiling for the can to live, which means you can’t place them where there’s a ceiling joist.

It’s not like you can just cut away a whole section of joist – that weakens the structure of the ceiling (and the floor above it).

But because canless lights have such a low profile, they can be installed where the joists are without any significant issues.

So if you have the perfect lighting design for your room, but the joists are interfering, choose canless lighting, and you should be fine.

How Do I Fit Canless Recessed Lighting In Existing Ceiling?

Fitting canless recessed lighting into an existing ceiling isn’t too difficult a task.

The hardest job is feeding the wires through, and if you’re replacing old lights, then that task is already started for you.

The first thing you need to do is the plan where you’re installing your lights.

You must get this right because you’re going to be sawing holes in the ceiling – you don’t want to make a mistake.

With the location of the lights planned, the next step is to cut the holes for the lights.

Canless recessed lights aren’t completely flat. Instead, they have a lip and a seal.

Only the top of the light should be inserted into the hole, with the lip sitting against the hole underneath.

This means you need to cut the holes to the size of the smaller circle at the top of the light.

New lights often come with a guide circle to make this easier.

You can use this guide to draw around so that you get the right size hole – make sure you cut accurately; if the hole is too big, the light won’t fit and will just fall through.

The other thing to consider is that you aren’t just fitting a flat disk.

One of the key components of recessed canless LED lights is the driver box, which has three jobs.

Firstly, it acts as a driver for the light, ensuring that the voltage is set to a suitable level so that the LED chips work properly.

Secondly, it doubles up as a junction box, keeping all the wires safe and secure inside a sealed box, making it easy to find the wire connections in the future, too, if you need to.

And finally, because all the wire connections are handled inside the junction box, you only need a straightforward cable to plug in the light.

Not only does this make installation more manageable when you’re on top of a ladder, but it also makes replacing the light in the future significantly easier since it’s just one cable to unplug.

How Do I Wire LED Recessed Canless Lights?

Let’s look at how to wire up LED recessed can lights.

You’ll need cable in the ceiling, or you’ll have to run the wire yourself.

That’s quite an in-depth process so if you don’t know how to, read this guide first.

Once you have the cable run to your light, here’s what to do:

1. Turn off the power
2. Strip back the wires within the driver boxes for your lights. It makes sense to do this while you’re on the floor instead of waiting until you’re at the top of the ladder.
3. Climb the ladder, and locate the cable. Thread it into the junction box by a few inches, then cut away the cover to expose the individual wires.
4. Strip back the wires on the power cable, and then twist like-for-like cables together from the cable to the junction box – black to black (live), white to white (neutral) and ground to ground (green or copper).
5. Secure them with wire nuts, then fold these wires back into the driver box, closing the box.
6. Feed the box into the hole in the ceiling, making sure the cable to connect the light is reachable.
7. Connect the light to the junction box via this cable. Then it’s all wired together.

If you’re installing multiple lights, you’ll need a second cable to run from this junction box to the second junction box.

So in step 3, when you’re feeding the live line into the junction box, also feed in a second cable. Then, follow steps 4 and 5, ensuring all wires are together.

So once exposed, you should have three black wires twisted together and secured (live from the source, one from the light you’re working on, and one from the cable running to the second light).

You’ll have three white neutral cables and three ground cables too.

Final Words

It can seem intimidating, having to cut holes into your ceiling to install lights.

But plan ahead and ensure you’ve got them in the right place, and the rest of the work isn’t too bad.

The wiring is self-explanatory, and it’s just running a cable up to the ceiling that can be tricky if there’s not one already.

But it’s a relatively painless DIY task thanks to simple driver boxes keeping the wiring neat and the way the lights just clip into place.

Have you already got can lighting, and you’re thinking of upgrading?

Or have you got a whole new canless project lined up for a room that currently has just a pendant, maybe?