Low Voltage Spotlights

Low Voltage Spotlights

Over the years, we have acquired two valued Kinkade paintings to adorn the walls of our home. We have a lot of respect for the talent of Thomas Kinkade and are forever dazzled by his ability to incorporate light into his images. One of the first presentations of his work that we encountered included demonstrations of how a spotlight on his artwork dramatically changed the appearance of his images in beautiful ways. The spotlight would be slowly dimmed and relit to create a dramatic effect.

We always wanted to recreate the ability to hosts such demonstrations in our home, but the effort to add the perfect spotlight where it is needed usually seemed to be of lesser importance than other projects we had in mind.

When we moved to Osprey Lakes, we decided that our Kinkades finally deserved their time in the limelight, so Lynn and I embarked on a quest to find the perfect spotlight.

It took a while, but we found lights like the one shown at left at Expo. We had to special order them, but they were delivered directly to our home a short time later.

I had to learn a little about low voltage lighting before I could place an order. Unlike standard fixtures that you simply use wire ties to connect to the household wiring, these lights required their own transformer and the transformers are sold separately. We almost just ordered the lights and would have been disappointed to later learn that they would not work without the "optional" transformer. To add to the confusion, we learned that we had to find a transformer that would allow us to dim the lights. Not all transformers permit that feature.

We were also very particular about the fixtures. We wanted low profile so that it didn't look like we were trying to attain the look of a museum. We wanted white to blend into the color of the ceiling. We wanted low cost. And we wanted the lights to be adjustable.

Since the lights are low voltage and lightweight, they did not require a traditional fixture. A small pan bracket is supplied and easily attaches to the ceiling exactly where it is needed. The hole for wiring needed only to be the approximate diameter of a common pencil.

But to install the wiring properly, a good bit of attic work was required. In the attic, the transformer had to be connected to standard wiring properly. I mounted junction boxes on a nearby stud and made the connections inside of them.

The photo above is the Kinkade we have on display in our living room. The one at left hangs above our bed in the master bedroom. Both are enhanced by a spotlight when we wish to turn it on.

The switch I installed for both lights is the dimmer shown at right. Maestro by Lutron switches are nice because they recall the preferred dimmer setting when turned off an on. They also slowly dim the lights when turned off and slowly raise the intensity when turned on. It is a lot more elegant than an unceremonious on and off effect.

In both cases, I was able to install the switch in an unused switch location. When we moved into the home, ceiling fan wiring was equipped with separate fan and light switches, but we combined them into more functional combination switches as we installed the fans.

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