Low-Voltage Lighting: Is It the Future of Home Lighting? – GreenBuildingAdvisor

The Pretty Good House Blog

Low-voltage lighting systems promise smaller wires, simpler controls, fewer drivers, and new possibilities for where and how we light our homes.

LED lighting took over the industry quickly. I bought my first LED bulb in 2011 for my desk lamp. It cost me $18 (and still works). In just 15 years, the technology has advanced dramatically. CFL bulbs disappeared from store shelves almost overnight, LED prices kept falling, and designers no longer had to work around the limits of a traditional bulb. That freedom opened the door to innovative, affordable lighting options. I mention this because low-voltage lighting appears to have the same hallmarks for rapid market transformation. It saves energy, reduces costs, and creates room for innovation. In short, low-voltage lighting is likely coming to your projects soon, so you might want to be prepared and know what’s on the horizon.

Before we go much further in the article, I should tell you that I, like most of you right now, are very new to this. In fact, most of my research for this article has all been my own preparation for our firm’s first low-voltage lighting project. I have every intention of following up this article in about 10 months or so with another that give a more experienced viewpoint of a new installation. I want to give a shout out to Katrina Belle of Maine Passive House (our builder for the project) for turning us on to this as a realistic option.  I should also mention that much of my research has been based on systems by Cleanlife as they are the systems we will be installing.

What type of low voltage lighting are we talking about?

If you’re a building professional of a certain age like myself, you’ve probably dealt with low-voltage lighting before. Usually it was (or is) a specialized fixture that had a driver (a device that steps down the voltage of household…