Outdoor pot light recommendations?

LED are always a good idea. There's this new kind where they do not actually drill a hole in your soffits but instead put a metal cladding over your existing soffits and install the led puck lights inside the metal cladding, that way your soffits are untouched and have no unwanted holes in them

Don't.

It's tacky and played out.

/Thread

You're going to get a divisive thread about this, as a lot of people don't like the significant light pollution they emit (both neighbours and overall area) and don't like the look (unless your home has particularly impressive architecture, and even then that kind of stuff is often uplit and not downlit). Others like the lights for safety reasons (though I guess you don't need a bunch of pot lights to illuminate the outside enough to see outside) or do like the aesthetic (as I'm guessing you do).

If you do end up getting these lights, please get dim ones to reduce light pollution.

I am SUPER picky about potlights. Here's what I've found makes a good potlight vs. one that looks like trash (my opinions, so like ... understand that):

#1. You shouldn't be able to see the physical light bulb from the road. This means the light needs to be recessed a lot in the casing. You want them to be giving off light, not be seen (seeing the physical light messes up the look). This also gives you many of options for colour; if you can't see the physical bulb, you can use almost any colour you want to accent your house/shrubbery/etc.
#2. The casing shouldn't create any sharp light edges. This goes along with the previous: with a recessed light, the opening needs to be a lot bigger for the "natural" taper of the light to diffuse. A bandaid is having the leading edge of the opening have a diffuser, but this "diffuser" should not be a lens, but baffles of some type. If you use a lens, it will look just like an exposed bulb.
#3. Your soffits HAVE to be deep. Like, 24" at least. That is absolute bare minimum. This also goes along with #1: If your potlights cast what looks like a sharp triangle of light on your house, it will look like garbage.
#4. Don't get super white lights or your house will end up looking like a strip mall. This is especially true if you have "unnatural" bricks (grey, white, light brown, yellow, etc) vs. anything that looks earthy (older bricks). 3,000k is the absolute whitest you will want. 2,700k is pretty commonly available, 2,400k is even better IMO (almost guarantees you'll be using incandescent though, or yellow LEDs).
#5. Don't go wacky on brightness. This one is REALLY tricky since you can't really test, but you basically want to use as few lights as possible, and as little lumens as possible. If your house is clearly lit up, you did it very wrong. If you can get dimmable ones, you'll probably find the best look is when you lower the output.

If you Google "potlights soffit", you'll see how abysmal almost every installation of these are. Yet if you look at uplights, which are just potlights on the ground basically, they look a lot better. That's a lot to do with how far away from the house they are.

I have 18" soffits, which basically means potlights will look stupid on my house. However, I'm going to try making custom ones with elliptical lenses so they APPEAR further than they are. Probably won't work, but at least see if I can find the mythical "good" potlight for a cheaply built home.

Thanks for the feedback!

Didn’t realize it was a contentious topic! We bought an older traditional looking house that we are very much going to stick with - the pot lights would just be functional for better light around the front of the house at night (and there would only be 3 of them)....so definitely no “look at me” vibe going on. The house is too modest for that look anyways.

See attached pic of the current look. We will be having the wood soffits replaced with white aluminum soffits as well. There is currently one recessed light already in the soffit (circled) and then then an ugly rusted spotlight (also circled).

Open to advice on alternative ways to improve the look and function without necessarily using pot lights.

Thanks again for the insights!

Btw - who are the miserable people that downvote legitimate threads?! Never ceases to amaze me how bored some people are.

How something looks is subjective. OP, if you like the look of potlights, then get them.

As for light pollution, pots are meant to function as directed light. They're probably the least intrusive style of lighting you can do, because their spread is limited.

mikek33 wrote: ↑ Btw - who are the miserable people that downvote legitimate threads?! Never ceases to amaze me how bored some people are.

I upvoted just to even the score, but you are right they are miserable.

xxxray wrote: ↑ I upvoted just to even the score, but you are right they are miserable.

I guess it’s like social media...brings out the repressed emotions of people who can’t regulate them in a healthy way.

Toukolou wrote: ↑ How something looks is subjective. OP, if you like the look of potlights, then get them.

As for light pollution, pots are meant to function as directed light. They're probably the least intrusive style of lighting you can do, because their spread is limited.

Hadn’t really given it a ton of thought...just sort of assumed pot lights was the route to go.

Now I’m genuinely interested to hear what other outdoor lighting solutions people have used.

Uplighting can be really nice too. Google "house uplighting" images for examples.

mikek33 wrote: ↑ Btw - who are the miserable people that downvote legitimate threads?! Never ceases to amaze me how bored some people are.

Evened it out

Potlights are nice in moderation and when well placed.

Good luck.

mikek33 wrote: ↑ Btw - who are the miserable people that downvote legitimate threads?! Never ceases to amaze me how bored some people are.

Ha like I said, it’s a contentious topic. It sounds like you’re trying to lightly use dim pot lights to provide important functional utility to your home. Few will be able to argue with you on that, because no one wants to slip and fall walking to their front door at night. Your use of them got mixed up with people who use them to light up their house like a Christmas tree and while the look itself is subjective (though often disliked) the light pollution is not. A lot of people see ‘exterior pot lights’ and instantly hate it so much they downvote.

Anyways, others in this thread have already provided better advice than I ever could - you don’t need a lot of lumens on the lights you install to have it be useful though because it’s dark out when they’re on. Warmer lights seem cooler when they’re dim as well (the eye gets more sensitive to blue light when it’s darker out), so a lower colour temperature (3000k max) might be to your benefit.

From the pic, you don’t have space for a typical over-the-garage light, so pot lights make a ton of sense there. Good luck!