Lighting Design 101
for Renovations

The most expensive design mistake in any renovation is bad lighting, because lighting decisions get made before drywall and they cannot be cheaply undone after. A modest lighting plan executed at the framing stage looks like a far more expensive plan retrofitted later, and the retrofitted version still does not work properly. If you are renovating, the lighting decisions are happening right now whether you are involved or not.

I have walked through hundreds of completed Ottawa renovations where the cabinetry was beautiful, the tile was correct, the paint was right, and the lighting plan was eight pot lights spaced evenly on a single switch. It killed the project. Below is the lighting framework I use on every active renovation, written for homeowners about to make these decisions.

The four-layer rule

Every well-lit room uses four lighting layers. Skip any of them and the room reads flat, harsh, or sterile. Stack all four and the room reads designed.

1. Ambient: general fill light. Recessed cans, ceiling fixtures, large pendants. Lights the volume of the room.
2. Task: focused light for specific work. Under-cabinet kitchen strips, vanity sconces, reading lights, desk lamps.
3. Accent: directed light on objects or features. Picture lights, art spots, toe-kick LEDs, in-cabinet display lights.
4. Decorative: fixtures that are themselves the design. Pendants, chandeliers, sculptural lamps. They produce light but they are also the visual feature.

The classic builder mistake is to do only ambient. The classic homeowner mistake is to do only decorative (the giant chandelier, no pots, two table lamps). The designed answer is all four.

Colour temperature, and why everything has to match

Light bulbs come rated in Kelvin. Lower numbers are warmer (yellower). Higher numbers are cooler (bluer). The chart matters.

• 2200K: candlelight. Mood lighting for accent only.
• 2700K: warm white. The standard for residential. Reads similar to old incandescent.
• 3000K: warm-neutral. Acceptable in some kitchens and bathrooms but borders on cool.
• 3500K-4000K: neutral to cool white. Office and commercial spaces. Wrong for residential.
• 5000K-6500K: daylight. Garage, workshop, hospital. Never for living areas.

The single most common Ottawa renovation lighting mistake: a kitchen with 2700K under-cabinet strips and 3000K recessed cans, because someone bought what was on sale at Costco. The eye reads the mismatch instantly even if it does not know what is wrong. Pick one Kelvin (2700K for almost every home) and hold it across every fixture in the room.

Bedrooms and living rooms: 2700K, no exceptions. Kitchens and bathrooms: 2700K is right; 3000K is acceptable; never higher. Closets: 2700K with high-CRI bulbs (CRI 90+) so colours read accurately when you are picking clothes.

Dimming is not optional

Every fixture in every room should be dimmable. Period. The reason is that any single light level is wrong for any single room across the day. The kitchen at 7 a.m. needs 100% bright. The kitchen at 9 p.m. needs 30%. The same room, different time, different light.

What this requires:

• Dimmable fixtures: read the spec sheet. LED fixtures must be specifically rated dimmable. Many are not.
• Compatible drivers: not all LED drivers dim cleanly. Most flicker or buzz at the bottom of the dim range with the wrong driver. Lutron and Cree publish compatibility charts. Use them.
• Compatible dimmers: the wall switch matters. The Lutron Diva is a reliable workhorse. Step up to Lutron Caseta if you want app/voice control. Skip generic dimmers from box stores; they are responsible for half the LED flicker complaints I get post-install.
• Multiple zones per room: a kitchen needs at minimum three switched zones (overhead, under-cabinet, pendants), all separately dimmable.

If your electrician quotes you "all on one switch" for a room, you are getting a 1985 lighting plan. Push back. Every layer should be independently switched and dimmed.

Wiring decisions you cannot undo

This is the part that catches most homeowners off guard. Lighting is a wiring conversation, not a fixture conversation. Every wire decision happens at the framing stage, before insulation, before drywall. After drywall, retrofitting any of these means cutting drywall, fishing wire, repatching, and repainting, which costs many times what the same wire would have cost at framing.

The decisions to make at framing:

1. Bedside reading lights: roughed-in junction boxes on each side of the bed wall, at 56" from finished floor, switched at the bedside. Almost no builders include this. Worth fighting for.
2. Picture light circuits: a wire run to where art will hang on key feature walls, switched at the room entry. A small amount of extra wire and labour at framing. Impossible to retrofit cleanly.
3. Toe-kick LED supply: a 24V transformer and supply wire to the kitchen toe kick and primary bath vanity toe kick. Inexpensive at framing. Cannot be added later without ripping cabinets.
4. In-cabinet lighting: low-voltage supply to upper cabinets if there will be glass-front displays. Same logic.
5. Stairwell wall sconces: junction box at each step landing. The standard "single ceiling fixture at the top of the stairs" is the wrong answer. Sconces every six feet, switched 3-way top and bottom, are the right one.
6. Outdoor wall washers: any exterior wall feature you might want to uplight needs supply wire stubbed out from the basement now. Adding it later means digging.
7. Smart hubs and dimmer neutrals: every switch box should have a neutral wire pulled (most older Ottawa homes do not). Required for any smart dimmer or any switch with an LED status indicator.

Doing all of these at framing on a 1,400 sq ft renovation is a modest line of extra electrical labour and material. Retrofitting any one of them after drywall costs several times as much, each. The math is brutal, and it is the single strongest argument for planning lighting before rough-in.

Recessed lighting: spacing and aiming

Most Ottawa kitchens get over-recessed-lit. The contractor draws a grid, evenly spaced, every 4 feet, and calls it a plan. The result is a flat, evenly-bright kitchen with no shadow, no contrast, and no mood. The recessed lights should be:

• Smaller than you think: 3" trim cans (or 2" pinhole) read more sophisticated than 6" Home Depot cans. Halo HLB3, Element by Tech Lighting are good picks.
• Closer to walls than to centre: a recessed can 24" off a wall washes the wall and creates depth. A can in the middle of the room creates a hot spot in the middle of the floor.
• Aimable, not fixed: spec gimbal trims so the light can be redirected post-install. Fixed downlights aim at the floor and waste 60% of their light.
• Run on multiple zones: the perimeter cans on one switch, the centre cans on another. Different rooms, different scenes.

The kitchen rule of thumb I use: one 3" recessed can per 24-30 square feet of ceiling, mostly perimeter, never directly over a person's head at the counter, never blocking a sight line to a pendant.

Pendants over islands: the sizing nobody gets right

Pendants over kitchen islands are the most-purchased and most-wrongly-sized fixtures in any renovation.

The rules:

• Bottom of pendant: 30" to 36" above counter for an 8-foot ceiling, 36" to 40" for 9 feet, 40" to 44" for 10 feet. Higher than that and the pendants float; lower and they block sight lines.
• Number of pendants: a 7-foot island gets two; an 8-9 foot gets two or three; a 10-foot gets three. One single big pendant rarely works on a long island.
• Pendant width: the combined width of the pendants should be less than 75% of the island length. A 9-foot island can hold three 16" pendants comfortably.
• Junction box placement: must be roughed in at exact pendant locations during framing. Last-second pendant choice changes mean re-framing. Decide pendants at design time.

The bathroom lighting plan

Bathrooms get lit wrong constantly. The default is a single Hollywood-style vanity bar over the mirror. That casts every shadow upward and makes the user look exhausted. The better plan:

1. Pair of vertical sconces flanking the mirror, eye level, on either side of where the head sits when standing at the sink. Casts even light from both sides, no shadows.
2. One recessed shower can, IP65 rated, 3000K, dedicated switch.
3. Two perimeter recessed cans for general fill, 2700K.
4. Toe-kick LED strip under floating vanity, on a separate switch, used as nightlight.
5. Optional: a small linear sconce or pendant near the tub if there is one.

A designed bathroom lighting plan costs more than the single-vanity-bar default, but not dramatically more once the fixtures and electrical labour are added up. The difference in spend is small; the difference in result is what separates a hotel-grade bathroom from a builder one.

Smart lighting, briefly

Worth doing if you live in the house. Skip if you are flipping. The Lutron Caseta system is the platform I recommend most often: reliable, no subscription, integrates with everything, dimmer switches that look like normal switches. You pay per dimmer plus a one-time hub. A whole-house Caseta install on a typical 1,500 sq ft project is a manageable product line plus install, and it is the kind of thing we scope as a clear add-on so you can decide room by room.

Skip the Wi-Fi-only smart bulbs. They lock you into one bulb forever, they fail when the router restarts, and they make basic light switches act unreliably. The professional answer is smart switches with normal bulbs.

If you are starting a project where lighting is a priority, our home renovation page walks through how the design phase typically integrates lighting plans before electrical rough-in. The lighting plan should be on paper before the electrician picks up a hammer. The cost of doing it right at framing is small; the cost of fixing it after drywall is enormous.