Recessed lighting is the single most requested improvement in older Pittsburgh houses, and it is also the one most often quoted by people who have never cut a plaster ceiling. The Electric Guys install recessed and LED lighting across the city and about thirty-three miles around, with the layout and the route planned before anything is opened.
The electrical side is straightforward. The ceiling is the job. What separates a clean install from a room that needs replastering afterwards is knowing what is above it, where the joists actually run, and how to get cable there without taking the ceiling down.
Why choose The Electric Guys
- We plan the layout for the room, not the grid. Spacing that ignores where the worktop, the sofa or the stair actually is produces a well-lit ceiling and a badly lit room.
- Plaster is treated as part of the work. Lath and plaster cuts, cracks and patches differently from drywall, and pretending otherwise is how a lighting job turns into a plastering job.
- We look above first. Attic access, floor voids, the direction of the joists and anything already running through them — ductwork, plumbing, old knob-and-tube — all decide the layout before aesthetics do.
- Dimming that works. Older dimmers designed for incandescent loads buzz and flicker with LEDs. If a room dims, the dimmer is part of the quote.
Our recessed lighting process
- Walk the room. What it is used for, where the light is needed, what the existing circuit can carry.
- Check what is above. Joist direction and spacing, insulation, and access from an attic or the floor above.
- Mark the layout. On the ceiling, with you in the room, before a single hole is cut.
- Run the circuit. Using existing voids and chases wherever possible so that openings stay at fixture size.
- Fit, test and dim. Fixtures set flush, trims level, switching and dimming tested through the range.
What older ceilings around here actually involve
Plaster and lath is the default in anything pre-war, which is a very large share of the city and the older suburbs. It does not punch cleanly like drywall — it needs cutting, and a careless hole leaves cracking that runs well beyond the fixture. It is entirely workable. It is just slower, and any quote that treats it as drywall is a quote from someone who is about to discover that.
Above the plaster, two local realities matter. First, joists in these houses frequently do not run where the room below suggests, particularly on upper floors and in houses that have been extended. Second, the attic in a pre-1930 city house is where the knob-and-tube lives, and dropping insulated can fixtures into a void with live knob-and-tube in it is both a hazard and often the moment the wiring conversation has to happen.
There is also the insulation question. Older attics in this region were frequently topped up with blown-in insulation during the seventies and eighties, and fixtures going into insulated ceilings need to be IC-rated. Fitting non-rated cans into insulation is a genuinely common find and a genuine fire risk.
Kitchens and finished basements are the two rooms this comes up in most. Kitchens because the original single pendant is never enough, and basements because the ceiling is usually the underside of the floor above with everything in the house running through it.
Serving Pittsburgh, PA and nearby
Across the city — Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Lawrenceville, Highland Park, Brookline and the rest — and out through Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park, Monroeville, Penn Hills, Murrysville, Robinson, Moon Township, McCandless and Cranberry.
Free estimates Monday through Saturday. Call or text (412) 501-7391, and a photo of the room and the ceiling helps more than you would think.