Our Work: Fans, Fixtures and Lighting
Ceiling fans, pendants, chandeliers, stair lights and outdoor lighting: the part of electrical work that stays on show.
A fan with a light kit over a bed, a dome pendant low over a dining table, step lights along an oak staircase: each looks simple once it’s finished, and each depends on work hidden above the ceiling or inside the wall.
That hidden work is what to judge in any install. A fixture or a fan is only as good as what holds it up and what feeds it: a box fastened to the framing and rated for the weight, connections made up inside the box rather than stuffed into the canopy, a ground wire that is actually connected, and a circuit with room for the new load.
Shoreway Electric installs recessed lighting, ceiling fans and new fixtures in Cleveland, Lakewood and Parma.
Signs of a Careful Fixture or Fan Install
Most of what makes an install last is out of sight, but a few signs show from the floor.
- The canopy sits tight and level against the ceiling, with no gap and no wire showing.
- A fan runs at every speed without wobbling.
- A heavy fixture hangs from a box or brace rated for its weight.
- Dimmers suit the LED bulbs they control, so lights dim smoothly without flicker or buzz.
- Outdoor fixtures and their boxes are rated for wet locations.
- Recessed trims sit flush, in straight lines.
- Switch plates sit straight and flush with the wall.
Fixtures in Old Plaster Ceilings
Pre-war houses add a twist. The old ceiling box may be a shallow pancake box, or the fixture may hang from a capped gas pipe left from the house’s gas-light days, and neither should carry a fan. Plaster and lath crack easily, so a new box goes in from below, through an opening the fixture’s canopy will cover.
The wiring in those boxes is often cloth-covered and brittle, baked by decades of hot bulbs. Many new fixtures are labeled for supply wire rated to 90°C, which old cable doesn’t meet, so the old ends may need cutting back to sound insulation or replacing with a new run.
Choose a kind of work.
Ceiling Fans
A ceiling fan hangs from a fan-rated box fastened to the framing, because a running fan pulls and shakes in a way a light fixture never does. Balanced blades and a snug canopy keep it quiet at every speed, and with a light kit, a wall switch, a pull chain or a remote decides how the fan and the light are run.
Pendants and Chandeliers
Pendants and chandeliers hang from a box rated for their weight, at a height set by what sits under them, and a pendant beside a mirror lights a face more evenly than one overhead. A cluster of pendants needs a canopy that carries each cord, with every shade leveled before the canopy goes up tight.
Stair and Step Lighting
Step lights sit in small boxes set into the stair wall, often one every second or third tread at the same height above each, so the light follows the line of the stairs. An LED strip under the bottom step marks where the stairs end.
Outdoor and Workshop Lighting
Low-voltage garden spotlights run from a transformer on a GFCI-protected outdoor outlet, with the cable buried shallow along the bed. In a workshop, LED battens go where they light the bench and the saw without throwing a shadow over the work.