32 halogens down to 24 LEDs, set out again
A whole-house relight where the answer was fewer lights in better places — plus insulation that should never have been over the old ones.
Filed under LED & lighting.
- Suburb
- Hillarys
- Job
- Whole-house relight
- Was
- 32 halogen downlights
- Now
- 24 LED, re-set-out
- On site
- Two days
- Load
- 1,600W down to 216W
What happened
The owners rang about a single downlight that had stopped working in the kitchen. What they actually wanted, once we talked, was for the kitchen not to be dark at the bench and for the living room to stop feeling like an office.
Thirty-two 50-watt halogens across a single-storey home. The lights ran hot enough that the upstairs bedrooms were noticeably warmer in the evening, and the electricity bill had a shape to it that the owners had stopped questioning.
Right number of lights, wrong places, wrong ceiling
The kitchen had six downlights in two rows, both of them behind where anyone stands at the bench. Every one of them was throwing a shadow onto the work surface from the person using it. Adding a seventh, which is what the previous quote had proposed, would have made no difference at all.
In the roof space, batts had been laid straight over eleven of the halogen fittings. Old halogen fittings need clearance and these had none. Two of the batts above the hallway had brown scorch marks on the underside, which is the point at which this stops being a lighting job and starts being a safety one.
The two dimmers were original leading-edge units, which is why the previous owner's attempt at LED bulbs had buzzed.
- New set-out marked up and walked through with the owners before any cutting
- 24 IC-rated, dimmable, colour-switchable LED fittings supplied and installed
- Kitchen relit to the bench edge rather than the ceiling centre — shadows gone
- Eleven fittings removed entirely, holes patched flush and sanded ready to paint
- Scorched insulation removed and replaced, remaining batts reinstated with correct clearances
- Both dimmers replaced with trailing-edge units matched to the drivers
Twenty-four lights doing more than thirty-two did, at about an eighth of the load, and a kitchen bench you can actually see what you are chopping on.
The part that mattered most was not the lighting. Scorched insulation over an un-rated fitting is one of the more common things we find in ceilings up here, and it is almost always found by accident during a job like this one.
- Set-out walked and agreed
Positions marked on the ceiling in pencil, changed twice with the owners, then locked.
- Roof space inspection
Insulation found over eleven fittings, two batts scorched. Photographed and shown to the owners.
- Old fittings out
All 32 halogens and their transformers removed and bagged for recycling.
- Living, kitchen and hall complete
New cable runs, new fittings in, circuits tested and live for the evening.
- Bedrooms and wet areas
Remaining fittings installed, dimmers replaced and matched to the drivers.
- Patching
Eleven redundant holes patched flush, sanded, and left ready for paint.
- Tested, cleaned, handed over
Colour temperature set together at 3500K, insulation reinstated, site vacuumed.
What they said afterwards
5 out of 5
We asked for the same lights back and they talked us out of it. Twenty-four instead of thirty-two, moved to where you actually stand, and the kitchen is a completely different room. They also found insulation sitting on top of the old fittings that had started to scorch, which nobody had ever looked at.
Anthea R.Hillarys · February 2026Read the job this refers to