Soffit Demo and Canless LED Retrofit Off a Vancouver, WA Kitchen

On this east Vancouver remodel, the room off the kitchen still had a dropped soffit running around it. That soffit decided where lights could go and made the room feel smaller. We took it out and put in 10 to 12 canless LED downlights laid out to match the kitchen next door.

Why the soffit came out first

Somebody built that soffit decades ago around where the cabinets ended. With it gone, the ceiling is flat and we can lay the lights out for the room instead of working around a box.

So the order was: tear out the soffit, lay out the lights, then cut the holes. If you lay out the lights first, you end up planning around something that’s about to be gone.

Why canless lights

Canless LED downlights are a thin fixture with a small driver that goes up through a hole in the drywall. There’s no metal can that has to fit between the joists.

That helps in a remodel like this:

• They fit where a can won’t, which matters when you’re working around existing joists, ducts and plumbing
• They take up less room in the ceiling, so there’s more space for insulation in a top-floor ceiling
• The trim sits almost flush, so the lights look like they’ve always been there

The downside is that the driver is part of the fixture. If one fails, you replace the fixture, not a bulb. For a room with a dozen lights it’s still the right choice, and it’s how we usually do recessed lighting installation in an existing ceiling.

Matching the kitchen

The homeowner wanted the new room to match the kitchen. That means the spacing, the distance off the walls, and the color temperature all have to line up. If they don’t, it looks like two different jobs with a doorway between them.

Color temperature is the one people miss. Two rooms with different Kelvin bulbs look off even if nobody can say why, so check what’s already in the kitchen before you buy lights for the next room. Our post on what LED retrofits actually save covers the specs.

We walk the switch layout before we cut

We reworked the switch layout as part of the job and walked it with the homeowner on site before cutting into any finished wall.

That takes ten minutes. You use your light switches every day, and it’s a lot cheaper to move a pencil mark on the drywall than a box that’s already in the wall.

Remodeling a kitchen or opening up a ceiling in Vancouver? Call 360-828-7143 or price out the lighting layout before the drywall goes back up.