ᐅ What is the typical cost of recessed ceiling lights (installed by a general contractor in a new build)?

Shiny86 schrieb:

What is best to use in the kitchen? Are pendant lights really that much better? To me, they seem more suitable for the dining room.

If you have a 3-meter (10-foot) kitchen island, pendant lights matching the dining room fixtures can be a good option.

However, it’s important to consider task lighting before or during the kitchen planning phase. If I had an open kitchen with only two ceiling lights (these are double “spots”) and tried to cook and chop with just overhead lighting, I would quickly lose interest because it’s simply not enough. Flooding the entire room with task light every time would make me realize something was done wrong.

The new minimalist kitchens with huge islands and no upper cabinets look great—as showroom models—but in my opinion, they’re not practical for cooking every day. Everyone may see it differently, but I know what it means when your eyes can no longer see properly due to insufficient lighting.

A "spot" in the strict sense is derived from "spotlight" and refers to a light source that illuminates a specific point, not an area (which would be a "floodlight"). There are also round floodlights that can be recessed into the ceiling. These are often called "spots" by laypeople simply because of their external shape.

When we talk about recessed ceiling lights here, which can have quite different characteristics, no conclusions about their quality as task lighting can be drawn. In our "entry laundry room," we installed Ansorg recessed ceiling lights with floodlight characteristics in the 3000-lumen (3000 lm) version and a 3000 K (Kelvin) color temperature. These are definitely not spots and are suitable as task lighting because they produce a perfectly balanced light beam without artifacts.

Now, the original question was about the price. For 200€ (euros) installed, you need to know the quality you are getting. It can be expensive but also very affordable. The latter would surprise me.

It’s good that you clarify this, but it seems to me like a fight against windmills to try to eliminate the incorrect use of the word “spot.” As always, if I don’t know what I’m getting, I can’t judge whether the price is reasonable. Our recessed spotlights, for example, cost around 200 EUR (about 220 USD) each, but the spotlight plus power supply alone costs about 120 EUR (about 130 USD). I find the total price acceptable in that case. If all there is, however, is just the one-euro socket with the two-euro retrofit, I find that clearly too expensive.

We were given a price without lighting included.
I’m not familiar with this. Do you usually purchase the lighting fixtures yourself? Or does the general contractor provide the fixtures during the selection process?

A few light bulbs don’t cost a fortune, do they?

If you go with the cheap GU10 options, then no. If you prefer "real" LED lights that don't rely on traditional connectors, then it might be necessary, although there are also very affordable versions available.