Hardwired Light Fixtures

Almost every hardwired fixture is bought from a photograph. That is a perfectly reasonable way to choose one, because a chandelier or a vanity bar is a piece of furniture that happens to emit light, and how it looks is most of the point.

The trouble is that the photograph tells you nothing about what the fitting will do to a room. Two identical-looking chandeliers, one holding 500 lumen bulbs at 2700K and CRI 90 and the other holding 300 lumen bulbs at 5000K and CRI 80, are completely different lights in the same shape.

So these pages are organized the way the rest of this site is: on the published numbers. Where a fitting takes standard bulbs - which most chandeliers, vanity bars, flush mounts, pendants and track heads do - the bulb is both the thing that decides the result and the only part you are free to change without an electrician.

Where a fitting has integrated LEDs and no bulb to swap, the manufacturer has made those choices for you, and then the published figures on the fixture itself are the whole story. Shop lights are the clearest case of that, which is why the garage and shop light page is the one here that ranks fixtures rather than bulbs.

Everything in this hub is wired into the building rather than plugged into it. That is a single fact with large consequences, and it is worth stating plainly before you buy anything.

If you rent, replacing any of these is an electrical alteration to somebody else's property. It needs the owner's agreement and in most cases a qualified person, and the tiers are set out in can you change a light fixture in an apartment. What you can always do is change the bulb, which is reversible in thirty seconds and needs nobody's permission - and that is most of the improvement available.

If you own, the fixture is genuinely yours to change, and these pages will tell you what to put in it. Budget for an electrician per fitting unless you are qualified; a ceiling rose is not a DIY job in the way a lamp is.

Either way, look at the plug-in alternative first. For a surprising number of rooms the plug-in version of the same shape does the same job with no wiring and no permission - pendants, sconces and even ceiling-style fittings all exist in corded form, and they are in plug-in and no-wiring fixtures.

The one thing worth doing before opening a single product page is the arithmetic. Every fixture on this site is judged against a lumen target for the room it is going in, and the method never changes: floor area multiplied by the published illuminance range for that room's use.

Two figures matter almost as much as the total. Beam angle decides whether the light lands where you need it or pools under each fitting - it is the whole subject of beam angle and spread, and it is why track and recessed pages talk about degrees rather than only lumens. And CRI decides whether faces, food and fabric look right, which is covered in best high-CRI LED bulbs.

Then there is dimming. Most of these fittings are sized for the brightest thing the room ever needs to do, which means they are too bright for the evening unless they dim. A hardwired fitting needs a wall dimmer, covered in best dimmer switches for LEDs - and the bulb has to be dimmable too, which is not automatic.

Three fixture problems that come down to where the light goes rather than what it looks like.

• Sloped ceiling light fixtures - hanging plumb under a vaulted ceiling.
• Lighting over a kitchen sink - the one spot where you work in your own shadow.
• Dimming a ceiling fan light - what fan makers allow, and what they prohibit.

Two pages for decisions made before anything is installed.

• Recessed vs track lighting - even light against aimed light, and which a renter can have.
• Lighting for high ceilings - output, reach and never getting the ladder out.