Practical Guide: Can Lights vs. Recessed Lights Selection

This article breaks down the differences between can and recessed lighting and highlights their capabilities.

What Are Can Lights?

Can lights are a recessed lighting fixture with a protective canister-shaped housing. These lights are designed to accommodate standard screw-type CFL and LED bulbs.

While the can shape provides a protective housing for the light bulbs, it also takes up a lot of vertical space. Thus restricting lighting options to high ceilings with adequate installation space.

What Are Canless Recessed Lights?

The opposite of a canned lighting fixture is the slim and sleek canless design. These fixtures use LED (light emitting diode) chips soldered onto a flat circuit board and require an external DC power supply.

Canless recessed lighting fixtures are an excellent space-saving option for houses with limited ceiling rooms. You forego the convincing and compatibility of can lights for a more sleeker design that can be installed in limited-space settings.

The standard can lighting design resembles a thin circular wafer. Thus, these fixtures are often sold as wafer lights.

Pros and Cons of Can Lights

Can recessed lights are a flexible lighting solution perfect for lighting a new house or retrofitting old commercial spaces with new LEDs.

Advantages of Can Lights

• More Convenient - The installation process for can lights is quick and easy. Mount the recessed lighting housing to your ceiling and wire it like another light fixture. Next, install standard screw-type light bulbs. You can use your existing light bulbs if they fit inside the can shape.
• Same Electrical Wiring - A central selling point for can recessed lights is their compatibility with older power-delivery mechanisms. You can use the same electrical wires as your traditional lighting setup.
• Lower Maintenance Cost - If your lights start to fade or burn out, you only need to replace the LED bulb in the can housing.
• Increased Protection - Can lights be inherently more secure since the outer metal housing protects the bulb from rodents and insects. Additionally, it ensures adequate separation between flammable insulation and the hot light bulb.
• Improved Directional Lighting - The canister shape helps guide the light beam to a single spot, providing excellent directional lighting options. You can manually adjust the light direction with a simple tap when paired with a gimbal or eyeball trim.
• Wider Bulb Options - While LED lights are the go-to option for recessed lighting, occasionally, you may want to use a different light bulb. Can lighting is also compatible with older AC incandescent and CFL light fixtures, giving you plenty of bulb options to customize your lighting design.

Drawbacks of Can Lights

• Bulky Design - Light fixtures can be big and bulky, and the added versatility of the design is counteracted by its size incontinence.
• Installation Limitations - If lighting is incompatible with low ceilings, you need at least 5-6 inches of vertical space to install the canister-shaped housing unit.

Pros and Cons of Canless Recessed Lights

Canless recessed lighting is an ideal ambient and accent lighting solution that matches the modern style of your business or home.

Advantages of Recessed Lights

• More Energy Efficient - Canless recessed lighting exclusively uses highly energy-efficient LED lights. The entire fixture is made of durable and efficient components resulting in higher quality and brightness.
• Versatility and Flexibility - The slimmer design of canless fixtures (wafer lights) makes them universally compatible with all residential and commercial spaces. Canless lights need only a few inches of vertical space for housing.
• Easier Installation - Unlike bulky can lighting fixtures, you don't need to cut a large hole in your drywall for the fixture housing. Standard installation requires a small circular cut for the compact unit, enough for the wires to pass through to the electrical box.
• Higher Quality Lighting - Wafer lights use higher quality LED chips with better color temperature (CCT) and rendering accuracy (CRI). As these lights are more difficult to replace, manufacturers ensure they hit higher longevity targets to reduce the replacement period.

Drawbacks of Recessed Lights

• Limited Bulb Options - Canless recessed lighting is limited to LED lights. You cannot swap the bulbs for a warmer incandescent or halogen bulb, restricting the overall use cases.
• Higher Bulb Replacement Costs - Since canless recessed lighting uses LED lights with fixed, non-replaceable chips, you will have to replace the entire unit and not just a bulb if the fixture burns out. On average, the replacement cost for can lighting is considerably lower.

Comparison Between Can and Canless Lights

Popular Use Cases

If you want to add recessed lighting to your indoor space, the choice between can and canless lights is tough. Both fixture designs are equally viable and provide excellent illumination.

Here are some common use cases where recessed light fixtures truly shine.

1. Kitchen Lighting

Lighting a kitchen is a tough job. Each section of your cooking space needs special attention and a matching lighting design that fits its application.

Can lights are great for general ambient lighting, providing maximum visibility to your kitchen. A top-down lighting design prevents unwanted shadows and helps you keep your kitchen looking clean and sleek.

However, your stovetop and sink areas have limited ceiling space and cannot fit a can design. A great space-saving measure is installing canless recessed lighting directly above a task area into the bottom of your wall cupboards.

2. Living Room Illumination

Living room lighting requires special attention and care, as this is your guest sitting area. Your living rooms should be bright and beautiful and reflect your personality with its customized lighting design.

Canless recessed lighting fixtures are excellent for wall-to-wall light coverage. With a wall-mounted dial or a smartphone app, you can get addressable LEDs that shift from warm to cool temperatures.

For some extra style, you should install an adjustable can light fixture on each wall to provide much-needed accent lighting.

3. Bathroom Lighting

Bathroom lighting has more clearly defined lighting parameters. Canless recessed lights for water splash zones (showers and sinks) and can lights for everywhere else.

Canless recessed lighting has better seals that prevent unwanted moisture from entering the fixture. While can fixture designs are generally safe for bathroom use, the sealed design of canless lights makes them a better option.

4. Retail Lighting

Retail stores include everything from clothing boutiques to vegetable stalls to furniture displays. You want to avoid intrusive and unappealing lighting fixtures in your store, the focus should be the products, they are the star of the show.

Recessed lights help elevate product displays while blending into the surroundings. You can use pinhole trim can lights for direct downward dynamic lighting or go for canless recessed lighting that illuminates the display from the bottom.

5. Industrial Lighting

Industrial spaces can be divided into two categories: high-ceiling and low-ceiling areas. High-ceiling spaces include large factories and warehouses where the roof is 20 ft. or more. These areas don't benefit from recessed lights, as they want lighting efficacy above all else.

Low-ceiling spaces like chemical plants or factory control rooms have much lower ceilings. These spaces benefit from the slim wafer design, high energy efficiency, and waterproofing capabilities of recessed lighting fixtures.

Can or Canless: Which One Should I Choose?

Like with all things in life, there isn't a simple answer to this question. Can lighting is a generally good lighting option with lots of versatility, trim options, fixture designs, and more. But for limited ceiling spaces, you only use a canless recessed light.

Additional factors can also impact your choice. You will need Insulation Contact (IC)--rated recessed lights if you have an insulated ceiling. IC-rated lights have a larger can design that maintains a 3-4 inch separation between the flammable insulation and the heat-generating lighting components.

Conclusion

Recessed lights are versatile and flexible illumination solutions that can fit almost every environment and fulfill every role, from ambient to accent to task lighting. For most, can lights are generally the go-to solution for their convenience, low maintenance costs, and excellent compatibility with older lighting technologies. The only exception to this rule is limited space locations where a canless recessed light makes more sense.

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