Overboarding ceiling

Flakie

We have a very rough artex type ceiling in our breakfast room which we want to get rid of as part of a refurb in there. We also would,like to install spot lighting in there to replace the strip light we currently have. Is it feasible to overboard the ceiling and use this as an opportunity to install the lighting? Don’t really want to have to do it through the upstairs room. Thanks.

Petriix

Yes, it's relatively straightforward to replace a strip light with spot lights on a bar but recessed spotlights would require cutting in the artex. It's pretty common to board over artex ceilings. 

TELLIT01

If you are going to overboard the ceiling anyway I presume it would be a realistic option to cut through the existing ceiling to access the joists above.  I'm assuming you want to do more than just replace the striplight with a single spotlight.

JohnB47

I guess it depends on how much ceiling height you are willing to lose. Normal overboarding a ceiling would create a thickness of around 20mm or up to 40mm if batons are fitted first. This would create too shallow a gap to fit recessed spotlights.

However, it would create enough of a gap to run the wiring needed to fit surface mounted spotlight fittings.

If you really want recessed spots you could go for thicker batons to create a much deeper void for the spots to recess into, but you'd loose ceiling height. There's also ventilation to consider. Recessed spotlight bulbs last longer if there's enough air movement around them - they actually do get quite hot. So enclosing them in a recessed space like described could cause ongoing headaches.

It it was me, I'd consider the option of using surface mounted LED spotlight fittings. The wiring could be hidden in the void created by using suitably sized batons and air circulation would be good. There are loads of designs - clusters of two, three, four, in-line etc.

Flakie

Thank you all for your advice. I like the idea of surface mounted ones as that would solve all our requirements.