Adding Extra Ceiling Light

scholesfan88

Hi

Does anyone know how simple a job it will be for a sparky to add an additional ceiling light in a living room? And a rough cost.

Fingers crossed were moving into a new build, the living/dining room has 1 ceiling light (and a couple of spot lighters near the patio door velux)

I'd like to add an additional light for a hanging pendant light over a dining room table.

I'm a noob at this, but if it involves the walls being damaged then I'll probably stick to eating in the dark

SF

grumbler

This depends on how easy is to get access to underfloor space from the room above. Can be not easy with all modern carpeting and chipboard panels underneath glued together.

Ebe_Scrooge

As per the above, really - the actual fitting of the light is a doddle, it's getting access to the wiring that can be a pain. The usual way is to lift (some of) the flooring in the room above, but as Grumbler says, if it's glued-together chipboard with carpet on top, that's going to add to the labour cost (unless you can prepare the access yourself ?).

It's worth thinking about whether you want the new light switched independently. Adding a wall switch for the new light will involve extra work, and will mean channelling the wall (unless the wire can be run down an existing cavity/conduit). But it may be a worthwhile investment in the long term if that's what you want, and far easier to do it now whilst you've got the floorboards up, rather than later.

grumbler

If the access from above is not easy, but the new wire goes from the exiting light between the rafters, without crossing them, I think theoretically this can be done from below.