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Throughout the time we’ve been writing this blog, we’ve talked a lot about different places to upgrade your lighting. Today we’ll be tying a lot of those disparate threads together and focusing on upgrading lighting in a single family home. Just as there is light in every room of your house, there is also a better way to light that room and a place for upgrading to LEDs in the process.

SunLake makes a wide variety of lights to help you in your pursuit of a more energy-efficient home. Many of SunLake’s lights come in a wide variety of color temperatures between 2700K soft white and 5000K daylight.

While this article will focus on just a handful of SunLake’s product offerings, we will be adding new products regularly.

Recessed can light retrofit kits

SunLake’s retrofit kits are easy to install, come with E26 adapters and, best of all, they’re wet-rated. These kits are highly versatile, fit most standard 4” - 6” cans, screw into the existing light socket, and snap easily into place. The wet environment rating means they can be used as recessed lights in a shower or even outdoors without risk of damaging the lights from exposure even to heavy moisture. We carry lights with two kinds of trim: both smooth and baffle. Baffle trim helps cut down on glare while smooth light provides a less filtered light from the downlight. These retrofit can fixtures are a great way to get a long-lasting, high quality, dimmable LED light at a fraction of the cost of running comparable incandescent bulbs. These lights are perfect for kitchens, bathrooms, basements, hallways, outdoor porches, and anywhere else existing cans are installed.

Disk downlights

Similar to the retrofit can lights, these downlights are also mounted flush to the ceiling and mimic the look of recessed can lighting. While they aren’t quite as moisture-resistant as the can retrofit lights, they have the benefit of being slightly more versatile due to the fact that they can be installed directly into a junction box and do not require an existing can fixture. They are therefore a much simpler solution for a room that could benefit from recessed lighting but has yet to be fitted with the required hardware.

Lamps

Whether it’s a table lamp or a floor lamp, utilitarian or decorative, lamps are probably the easiest light sources to upgrade to LED, mostly because it’s just a question of swapping out one bulb for another. Lamps typically use one of two kinds of light bulbs defined by the size of their base. The E26 medium is the “standard” base used for nearly all household light fixtures. The smaller E12 base is also known as a “candelabra” base and is used in many chandeliers, ceiling fan fixtures, and some smaller decorative or ornamental lamps. The kind of lamp you have will dictate the LED bulb you’ll want to use. Lamps with exposed bulbs or clear bulb coverings may benefit from globe-shaped G25 bulbs or the classic look of SunLake’s vintage filament-style LEDs. A more “traditional” lamp with a lamp shade that obscures the view of the light source itself would be fine with a simpler more “basic” and less decorative standard A19 LED bulb.

Ceiling fixtures, pendant lights, and chandeliers

Nearly as easy to upgrade to LED as your standard household lamps, ceiling fixtures, pendant lights, and chandeliers also typically simply require a bulb swap to effectively upgrade them to LED to save energy and money. It is worth noting, however, that since these fixtures, unlike lamps, are typically wired into light switches, they are also often controlled by dimmer switches. It’s important to note that while all of SunLake’s E26 and E12 bulbs are dimmable, not all manufacturers’ products are. It goes without saying that if you’re planning on using dimmer switches, you need dimmable LEDs. But you’ll also need dimmers compatible with LED bulbs. There are plenty of these on the market and while SunLake doesn’t sell them, our bulbs are compatible with nearly all the major brands’ products.

Garage and workshop lights

Too often packed full of our priceless, prized possessions (read: “junk”) garages and workshops are frequently dark, windowless boxes that are too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. Often when people think about lighting their homes, the garage is the last place people think of (if they remember it at all), especially if it’s a detached garage, and even when it’s connected to the house itself. Of course every garage, like every home, is different and has different lighting requirements. SunLake has the lights you need for nearly any household lighting requirement but we’ll focus on just a couple specific lights for the sake of this section. Since light in garages and workshops are often more about utility than aesthetics, we recommend T8 LED tubes and our shop lights for the best overall illumination. The T8s can be relatively easily installed in existing troffers with minor rewiring to remove the old fluorescent ballast. See our post here about upgrading fluorescent fixtures to LEDs. SunLake’s shop lights (which come in three varieties) are great for bright, versatile ambient or task lighting. They can be hung on chains and strung together in tandem, meaning they can be lowered as needed for working on specific detail-centric tasks, but can also be raised to be used as ambient light to illuminate the whole of the space.

Your home should be a comfortable place. That means surrounding yourself with the things and people that make you happy. But don’t discount the importance of the lighting you use to be able to see those things and people. Having adequate, high quality lighting is just as important as a comfortable sofa or quality mattress. SunLake Lighting has the lights you need to create that homey, comfortable, safe space that you deserve.

Below are a few of the examples we covered in this article. For SunLake’s full catalog, click here.