LED Downlight Installation Cost NSW 2026 - Complete Pricing Guide

LED Downlight Installation Costs in New South Wales for 2026

Downlight quotes vary more than almost any other small electrical job, and the reason is that the phrase covers two completely different pieces of work. One of them is replacement, meaning an existing hole, an existing cable, and a new fitting going into both, and that is $60 to $150 a point depending on whether the old fitting was a halogen with a transformer to remove, and an electrician can do a houseful in a day. The other is installation, meaning a new hole cut into a ceiling, cable run from somewhere suitable, and the fitting connected and tested, at $120 to $320 a point depending on whether the circuit already exists. Both get quoted as downlights, and a customer comparing them without knowing which is which cannot read the prices.

For 2026 across New South Wales, a room of six fittings on existing wiring sits at $450 to $900 and a whole house of twenty to thirty fittings at $1,800 to $4,500. Adding dimming to a circuit already running LEDs is $180 to $450. Those figures assume ordinary plasterboard ceilings with accessible roof space above, which is the common case and not the universal one.

The technical point that costs people money later is the fitting classification. The standards classify recessed luminaires by whether insulation can touch or cover them, and the ratings follow a convention set in the standards. A fitting marked IC can be covered by insulation continuously. One marked CA, with a number such as CA80 or CA135, allows insulation to abut it but not to cover it. A non-IC fitting requires clearance from insulation and from building elements altogether. Specifying the wrong one means either a fire risk or a bare patch cut into your ceiling insulation around every light.

All of this counts as licensed electrical work in New South Wales without exception, including changing a fitting that looks like a simple swap. The wiring rules are AS/NZS 3000, published through Standards Australia, and work health and safety obligations sit with SafeWork NSW. The service side of this sits at downlight installation, and hourly rates for electrical work sit in the electrician pricing guide.

Why Halogens Are Being Replaced

Most downlight jobs in New South Wales right now are replacements, and the reason is that the fittings being replaced were a problem from the day they went in. A halogen downlight runs hot enough to be a hazard in its own right. The lamp converts most of the energy it draws into heat instead of light, and that heat has to go somewhere, which on a recessed fitting means into the ceiling cavity. That heat drives the clearance requirements, the insulation problem and the fire history attached to these fittings. An LED of equivalent output draws a fraction of the power and runs far cooler, and that is why the whole clearance conversation changes with the fitting.

The running cost difference is the part homeowners feel. A house with thirty halogen downlights at fifty watts each is drawing fifteen hundred watts when the lights are on, which over the hours a family has them switched on is a meaningful share of a quarterly bill. The same thirty points in LED draw a small fraction of that. On a whole house conversion the saving is usually enough to pay back the work within a few years, which is unusual for an electrical upgrade.

Lamp life is the other half of the picture. Halogen lamps fail regularly and replacing them means a ladder and a trip to the shops several times a year, and in a high ceiling that is an annoyance with a real safety dimension for an older person. Quality LED fittings carry ratings in tens of thousands of hours, so the maintenance largely disappears for the life of the fitting.

There is a point worth making about the trade-off. An LED downlight usually comes as an integrated unit, meaning the light source and the fitting are one item, so when it fails you replace the whole fitting and not just a lamp. That makes a longer cycle but a bigger job when it comes, and it is an argument for buying fittings from a range that will still exist in eight years. A whole-house changeover is covered under LED lighting upgrades.

Swapping Fittings Against Installing New Ones

These are the two jobs hiding behind the same word, and knowing which one you are buying is most of the job. A swap uses what is already in the ceiling, so the electrician removes the old fitting, disconnects it, removes the transformer if it is a halogen, connects the new LED and clips it into the existing hole. Where the new fitting matches the old cut-out diameter, nothing else happens and the work runs $60 to $150 a point. On a house with twenty existing points that is a day and no mess.

An installation starts from nothing, which means somebody has to get into the roof space, find a suitable supply point, run cable to each new location, mark and cut the holes from below, connect each fitting and test the circuit. That is $120 to $220 a point where an existing circuit can take the load, and $180 to $320 where a new circuit has to be run back to the switchboard. The in-between case is the one that surprises people. Replacing halogens with LEDs when the replacement has a smaller cut-out than the old one means every hole needs patching, so plasterwork and painting around every light in the house. That turns a tidy electrical job into a three-trade job and is the single most common reason a downlight project costs more than the quoted electrical price. Ask about cut-out diameters before anybody orders fittings.

Working out which job you have is straightforward. Count the existing downlight holes and decide whether you want lights in exactly those positions. If yes, you are buying a swap and you should be paying swap rates. If you want more lights, or them in different places, you are buying an installation and the price per point roughly doubles. Pendants, battens and the rest of the category sit under lighting installation.

Insulation Contact Ratings and Why They Matter

This matters more than any other technical detail on the page and the one most likely to be left out of a quote. Recessed luminaires are classified by their relationship with insulation, and the classification is marked on the fitting. A fitting marked IC, or IC-F, is built so insulation may abut it and cover it continuously. A fitting in the CA family, marked CA80, CA90 or CA135, allows insulation to abut the fitting but not to cover it. A non-IC fitting requires a clearance from insulation and from building elements, with the distance set by the applicable requirements.

The reason this matters to a householder has nothing to do with electrical theory and everything to do with your ceiling. If the electrician installs non-IC fittings, the insulation in your roof space has to be pulled back from every single light and kept back. On a ceiling with twenty-five downlights that is twenty-five bare patches in your thermal envelope, which you have paid for and which nobody will ever put right. The heating and cooling consequence is real and permanent.

Specifying IC-rated fittings solves it at the point of purchase for a modest difference in fitting price. Insulation can then be laid straight across the ceiling as a continuous layer, what it is supposed to be. On any job where the ceiling is insulated, or might be insulated later, this is the question to ask before fittings are ordered, not after they are in the ceiling.

The alternative where non-IC fittings are already in place is a purpose-made downlight cover fitted over each one, which maintains the required clearance while letting insulation be laid over the cover. That works and remains the standard remedy, but it is an extra item per fitting and an extra trip into the roof space. Specifying correctly the first time costs less than correcting it later. The classifications sit within the luminaire and wiring standards published through Standards Australia.

Hole Sizes, Patching and the Hidden Cost

Cut-out diameter is a small number that decides whether your downlight project involves a plasterer. Older halogen downlights were commonly installed with cut-outs around 90 to 100 millimetres, though the range is wide and varies by era and brand. Modern LED fittings come in a spread of cut-out sizes, and many popular models are smaller than the holes they are replacing. Where the new fitting is smaller, it does not cover the existing hole and the ceiling has to be patched, sanded and painted at every single light.

That cost is rarely in the electrical quote because it is not electrical work. Patching and painting around a downlight runs roughly $60 to $140 a point once a plasterer and a painter have been, and on a house with twenty-five lights that is a second bill of a similar size to the first. It also means a second and third visit and a repaint of the affected ceilings to avoid a patchwork finish.

The way to avoid it entirely is to specify fittings that match or exceed the existing cut-out. Most manufacturers publish cut-out diameters clearly and many ranges offer the same light in multiple sizes or with a wider trim that covers a larger hole. Measure one of your existing holes before anybody orders anything, which takes a minute with a tape measure and a step ladder. Where the holes vary across the house, which happens where lights were added at different times, the practical answer is to specify to the largest hole or accept patching in the minority of locations. Either way it is a decision to make deliberately at quoting stage instead of as a surprise on the day the fittings arrive. What the patching itself involves is set out under ceiling repairs.

Ceiling Types That Change the Job

Not every ceiling takes a recessed downlight, and the ones that do not are common enough in New South Wales housing to be worth checking first. A standard plasterboard ceiling with an accessible roof space above is the easy case and most of the prices on this page assume it. You get room to work above, cable runs easily, and holes cut cleanly from below. Everything else is a variation that adds cost or rules the approach out.

Raked and cathedral ceilings are the common complication. Where the plasterboard is fixed directly to the rafters there may be very little void above, sometimes only the depth of the insulation and the batten, which can be too shallow for the body of a fitting and leaves nowhere to run cable. Surface-mounted fittings or track lighting are frequently the honest answer there, and an electrician who says so is giving you good advice rather than avoiding work. Concrete ceilings in apartments form the other hard stop and they are covered separately on this page. Lath and plaster ceilings in older terraces and semis are workable but fragile, so holes need cutting carefully and cracking around the opening is a real possibility. Ornate pressed metal or decorative plaster ceilings are usually a case for not cutting at all.

Access decides most of what follows, and it reduces to two questions. Is there a manhole, and will a person physically fit through the roof space to where the lights are going? A low-pitched roof over the back of a house, or a space crowded with ducting from an added air conditioning system, can mean the electrician works from below through the holes alone, slower work that limits where cable can go. The making-good afterwards is priced under ceiling repairs.

How Many Downlights a Room Actually Needs

The commonest mistake in a downlight job is putting in too many, and it costs money twice. The habit of overlighting a room comes from the halogen era. Halogen downlights threw a narrow beam and gave poor spread, so rooms were filled with them to get even light, and a grid of eight or ten in a living room became normal. Modern LED fittings have wider beam angles and better diffusion, so the same room is usually well lit with fewer points. Replacing ten halogens with ten LEDs frequently produces a room that is brighter than anybody wants and costs more than it needed to.

A practical starting point is spacing instead of counting. Fittings spaced roughly 1.2 to 1.8 metres apart, set in from the walls by around half the spacing, give even coverage in a standard ceiling height. A twelve square metre bedroom often needs four points and sometimes three. A living room of thirty square metres might take six to eight. Those are starting figures to discuss, not rules, and ceiling height changes them.

Layering beats blanketing, and it is the best piece of lighting advice there is for a renovation. A smaller number of downlights providing general light, plus a pendant over a table, lamps in the living area and task lighting under kitchen cabinets, gives a far better result than a dense grid of recessed fittings doing everything. It also costs less, because each downlight point carries a price and a lamp does not.

One specific case against the grid deserves naming. Downlights directly above where people sit produce glare and shadows on faces, and that is why a dining table is better lit by a pendant than by two downlights overhead. Placing fittings to wash walls and work surfaces instead of forming a symmetrical pattern on the ceiling plan gives a better room. Task lighting in the room where it matters most is dealt with under kitchen lighting costs covers task lighting in the room where it matters most.

Colour Temperature and Dimming

A five minute conversation at quoting stage decides how the room feels for the next fifteen years. Colour temperature is measured in kelvin and describes whether the light reads warm or cool. Around 2700K is warm white, close to the yellow light of the halogens being replaced, and it suits bedrooms and living rooms. Around 3000K is a warm neutral and has become the common default through most of a house. Around 4000K is a cool white that reads clean and clinical, which works in a laundry, garage or workshop and feels cold in a lounge room. Anything at 5000K or above belongs in a commercial space.

A growing number of fittings offer a switch on the body that selects between two or three temperatures, set before the fitting goes into the ceiling. It costs a few dollars more per fitting and removes the risk of living with a decision you regret, and that is money well spent across a whole house. Consistency matters more than the number you choose. Mixing 3000K and 4000K fittings in rooms that see each other produces a visible difference in the doorway that people notice without being able to name it, and it is the most common complaint after a partial house upgrade where the second batch came from a different supplier.

Dimming is where downlight jobs go wrong most often, and the reason is a mismatch and not a fault. An LED fitting draws very little current, and a dimmer designed for the hundreds of watts a halogen circuit pulled may not see enough load to behave. The result is flicker at low settings, a buzz from the wall plate, lights that will not go below half, or a circuit that drops out entirely.

The fix is to specify a dimmer the fitting manufacturer lists as compatible, and to accept that the existing wall plate probably needs replacing. Budget $180 to $450 to convert a circuit correctly, which covers the dimmer, the labour and a return visit if a second attempt is needed. Ask whether the fittings are dimmable at all before assuming, because plenty of cheaper fittings are not and no dimmer will make them behave. Switching and control work beyond downlights falls under lighting installation.

Fitting Quality and What Fails First

The cheapest LED downlight and the dearest one look identical in the ceiling and behave very differently in year four. In an integrated LED downlight the light source, the driver and the heatsink are one sealed unit, so whatever fails takes the whole fitting with it. That makes the build quality of the parts you cannot see the thing you are buying. The driver fails long before the diodes do, and a driver running hot in a confined ceiling cavity with insulation nearby ages faster than one with air around it.

Brands with a genuine Australian presence and local warranty support include Clipsal, which has been made and sold here under the Schneider Electric group for decades, HPM under Legrand, Martec, Haneco, and Brightgreen, which designs and assembles in Melbourne. Philips and Osram both carry long international track records. Naming them is not a recommendation of a particular model, it is a point about who you can reach when a fitting fails in year three.

Warranty length is the most honest signal on the box. A five to seven year warranty from a company with an Australian office is a different proposition from a two year warranty from an importer, because the claim process is where the value sits. Under the Australian Consumer Law, administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, goods must be of acceptable quality and last a reasonable time regardless of what the warranty card says, though enforcing that against a supplier who has left the market is harder than reading the brochure suggests. There is a labour argument that people miss. Replacing twenty failed fittings in year four costs the same in labour as installing them did, so a saving of eight dollars a fitting at purchase is wiped out several times over by one premature round of replacement. On a job where the electrician is already in the ceiling, paying for the better fitting is the cheaper decision over the life of the installation.

Drivers, Transformers and Old Halogen Gear

Every halogen downlight in a ceiling has a transformer sitting next to it in the roof space, and those transformers are part of the job whether the quote mentions them or not. Low voltage halogen downlights ran at twelve volts, which meant each fitting needed a transformer to step the mains supply down. Those transformers sit loose on the ceiling joists, the timber beams the ceiling hangs from, or clipped to a batten, and a house with twenty four halogens has twenty four of them up there. When LEDs go in, each old transformer should be disconnected and removed instead of left in place and abandoned, because an abandoned transformer still wired at one end is a hazard and a future diagnostic headache.

Some electricians remove them as a matter of course and include it in the price. Others leave them, and a quote that is noticeably cheaper per fitting is sometimes cheaper because this step is not in it. Ask directly whether old transformers and redundant wiring are being removed, and whether that is priced in.

Mains voltage halogens, which ran at 240 volts with no transformer, make for a simpler swap, and the giveaway is usually a larger lamp with a bayonet or screw base, against the small two pin lamp of a low voltage fitting. An electrician can tell in thirty seconds which type you have, and it is a useful thing to settle at quote stage because it changes the labour time per point. A separate driver arrangement is worth asking about on a quality installation. Where the driver sits outside the fitting instead of sealed inside it, a failed driver can be replaced on its own without pulling the fitting out of the ceiling, and the driver runs cooler because it is not inside a confined housing. It costs more up front and fewer residential fittings are built this way, but on a large job it changes the long term maintenance picture.

Circuits, Switchboards and When the Board Is the Problem

Replacing halogens with LEDs reduces the load on a lighting circuit dramatically, which sounds like good news and occasionally uncovers an expense. A circuit that ran sixteen halogen downlights at fifty watts each was carrying eight hundred watts. The same sixteen points in LED draw perhaps a hundred and sixty. That spare capacity is why adding fittings to an existing circuit is generally possible without a new run back to the board, and it is why the cheapest way to add a light is to add it where a circuit already reaches. A new circuit becomes necessary where the existing one is already loaded, where the work is in a part of the house no lighting circuit currently serves, or where the existing wiring is old enough that extending it is poor practice. That is the $180 to $320 per point figure against the $120 to $220 one, and the difference is a cable run to the switchboard and a new breaker.

Older switchboards are where a downlight job sometimes stops. A board with ceramic rewireable fuses, or one with no safety switch protecting the lighting circuits, may need upgrading before new circuits can be added, and that is a separate job at a separate price. An electrician will tell you during the quote if the board is going to be an issue, and it is a fair question to ask directly instead of waiting for the variation. Safety switch requirements are set out in the wiring rules and apply when circuits are added or altered, part of why a seemingly small addition can trigger work at the board. What an inspection actually looks at is set out under electrical safety inspections, while electrical fault finding is the place to start if something on the circuit is already misbehaving.

Apartments, Strata and Concrete Ceilings

Downlights in an apartment are a different job from downlights in a house, and the two reasons are the ceiling and the paperwork. Most apartment ceilings are a concrete slab, either directly set and painted or with a shallow plasterboard lining suspended below it. Where the ceiling is a bare slab there is nowhere for a recessed fitting to sit, and the honest answer is that downlights are not possible without building a bulkhead or a dropped ceiling to create a cavity. Where there is a lining, the available depth above it is often sixty to ninety millimetres against the generous void of a house roof, which rules out deeper fittings and restricts cable routes to the space that exists.

Shallow profile fittings are made for exactly this case and an electrician who works in apartments will carry them. Expect to pay more per fitting and more in labour, because cable has to be run within a confined cavity rather than across an open roof space, and because a slab above means no drilling upward. The strata question has to be settled before the quote. Work inside your own lot that does not touch common property is usually within your rights, but a ceiling in an apartment can be common property depending on the plan, and cutting into it may require owners corporation approval. Strata schemes in New South Wales operate under state legislation and the relevant information sits with the NSW Government, with disputes heard by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Reading your own by-laws and asking the strata manager in writing takes a week and is cheaper than the alternative.

Fire rated ceilings end many apartment downlight requests outright. A ceiling forming part of a fire separating element between lots or between a lot and a corridor cannot simply have holes cut in it, and where penetrations are permitted at all they must be made with tested fire rated fittings or collars that maintain the rating. The performance requirements sit in the National Construction Code published by the Australian Building Codes Board. An electrician who declines the job on these grounds is giving you good advice, not losing interest.

Licensing, Certificates and Why This Is Not a DIY Job

There is no version of downlight work in New South Wales that a homeowner may lawfully do themselves, and that includes swapping a fitting that looks like changing a globe. A globe or lamp that unscrews or unclips from a fitting is a consumable and anybody may change it. An integrated LED downlight is not a globe. It is a luminaire wired into the fixed installation, and disconnecting and reconnecting it is electrical work requiring a licensed electrician. The distinction matters because the fittings are sold in hardware stores next to light globes, which leaves a reasonable person assuming the two are equivalent.

The consequences of getting this wrong are not theoretical. Unlicensed electrical work voids home insurance for anything arising from it, which on a ceiling fire is the whole claim. It also carries penalties under state legislation. And at sale time it is the kind of thing a building inspection picks up.

A licensed electrician must give you a certificate for the work. For most residential jobs that is a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work, issued by the electrician who did the work and testifying that it has been tested and complies. You should receive a copy, and if you do not, ask for it, because it is the document that matters to an insurer and to a future buyer. Licensing requirements and the current certificate obligations sit with the NSW Government.

Where a downlight installation forms part of larger residential building work, the contract thresholds apply. Residential building work over $5,000 in labour and materials requires the contractor to hold a licence, and work over $20,000 requires home building compensation cover as well as a full written contract. A twenty fitting downlight job on its own sits below both, but the same job inside a kitchen renovation does not, which is worth knowing when a builder is coordinating trades. Disputes go to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Safety obligations during the work sit with the contractor under state work health and safety law, administered by SafeWork NSW, and roof space work carries real risks from heat, confined access and old wiring. An electrician who sets up properly, isolates circuits before going up and takes their time in a forty degree ceiling in February is doing the job correctly, not slowly.

Energy Savings Incentives in New South Wales

Lighting upgrades sit inside a state incentive scheme, and the way it works is often misunderstood by the people being offered it. The New South Wales Energy Savings Scheme forms part of the state Energy Security Safeguard. It is administered and regulated by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, with policy sitting within the state government. The mechanism is that accredited providers create certificates for energy savings achieved by eligible upgrades, and the value of those certificates is what funds a discount offered to the customer.

What that means in practice is that you do not apply for anything. An accredited provider, or an installer working with one, offers the work at a reduced price and claims the certificates. Lighting has historically been one of the activity types included, with commercial and multi-unit lighting better served than single dwellings. Because eligibility rules, activity types and certificate values change, there is no honest fixed figure to quote for a residential downlight job in 2026. Anyone offering a specific discount should be able to name the accredited provider, the activity the work falls under and what the price would be without the incentive. Ask for all three in writing, then compare the net figure against an ordinary quote from a local electrician, because a discounted price on an expensive job is not automatically cheaper than an undiscounted price on a sensible one.

Carry a couple of cautions into that conversation. Scheme funded lighting offers have historically come with pressure to accept a fitting selection you did not choose, so confirm the make, model and classification of what is going into your ceiling before agreeing. And a scheme discount does not remove the licensing and certificate obligations covered above, so the same paperwork should arrive at the end. Current scheme details are published through the NSW Government.

Sydney and Metropolitan Pricing

Sydney has the deepest pool of electricians in the state and some of the highest prices in it, less contradictory than it sounds. Labour rates in the metropolitan area run above regional rates, and parking, access and travel time between jobs in the inner suburbs add real cost to a day that produces the same number of fittings. Against that, competition is genuine, suppliers are everywhere, and a specialist in apartment work or in older ceilings is findable instead of hypothetical.

Housing stock drives more of the variation than geography. The inner west and the eastern suburbs carry Federation and Victorian homes with lath and plaster ceilings, ornate cornices and roof spaces that were never designed to be worked in, all of which adds time per point. The north shore has large homes with high and raked ceilings. Western Sydney has newer brick veneer housing with generous accessible roof spaces, the quickest and cheapest type of ceiling to work in. Apartment towers across the inner city and along the metro corridors bring the slab and strata questions covered earlier.

Metropolitan quotes attract a couple of practical notes. Parking is sometimes charged separately in the inner suburbs and in parts of the eastern suburbs, so ask whether the quote includes it. And a whole house job is proportionally better value in Sydney than a single fitting, because the travel and setup cost that pushes a one point call out up is spread across thirty points instead of one.

Regional New South Wales Pricing

Outside the metropolitan area the per fitting rate usually falls and the call out component usually rises. A regional electrician charging less per hour than a Sydney counterpart may still produce a dearer quote for two fittings, because the hour of driving each way has to be paid for by somebody and there are fewer jobs on the day to share it between. The arithmetic reverses once there is volume in the job. A whole house of twenty five fittings in a regional town is frequently the best value job of this type available anywhere in the state, because the travel is absorbed and the labour rate is lower.

The coastal centres from Wollongong up through Newcastle and the Hunter behave much like outer metropolitan Sydney, with reasonable depth of trades and pricing a little below the city. The Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands add older housing stock and in the mountains some genuinely awkward roof spaces. The North Coast from Port Macquarie to Tweed has a strong trade base with seasonal demand pressure. The Riverina, the central west and the far west have fewer electricians across greater distances, and a single fitting call out there is poor value compared with batching the work.

Batching does more for a regional customer than any other move. Adding the downlights to a list that also includes a ceiling fan installation, a couple of new power points and anything else outstanding turns one call out into a half day of productive work and improves the rate on everything in it. One further consideration applies specifically to lighting in regional areas. Where a property is on a long rural supply or carries generator or solar backup, voltage behaviour can differ from a suburban street, and cheap drivers are less tolerant of it. An electrician who works in the area will know whether that is a local factor worth specifying around.

What to Look Out For in a Downlight Quote

A downlight quote can be read in about five minutes if you know which four things to look for. The first is whether the quote distinguishes replacement from new installation, point by point. A flat per fitting price across a job that mixes existing holes with new ones is either generous on the new points or expensive on the old ones, and in either case it hides where the money is going. Ask for the two categories to be separated. The second thing to look for is the fitting itself, and the quote should name the make, the model, the colour temperature and the insulation classification. A quote that says LED downlight and nothing more is not a quote you can compare against another one, because the fitting is most of the difference between a cheap price and a fair one.

The third is ceiling patching, which matters if any new fitting has a smaller cut-out than the hole it replaces, the ceiling needs patching and painting around each one, and that is either in the quote, excluded from it, or about to become a variation, so get the position in writing. Ceiling repair work is a separate trade on most jobs. The fourth is what happens at the switchboard. Whether a new circuit is needed, whether a safety switch has to be added, and whether the board itself is going to be a problem are all things an electrician can assess during the quote. An answer of we will see when we get up there is honest about uncertainty, and it should come with a stated hourly rate for the unknown, not an open ended commitment.

Get three or four quotes, and weigh them against the same specified fitting. Where one quote is dramatically lower, the difference is usually old transformers left in place, a cheaper fitting, patching excluded, or an unlicensed operator. Ask for a licence number and check it, ask for the ABN, and ask for the certificate of compliance to be confirmed as part of the job. Typical hourly rates sit in the electrician pricing guide, and after hours callouts are priced under emergency electrician costs.

One last note concerns timing. Downlight work is quieter than it looks but it does mean an electrician moving through every room and a drop sheet under each light, so a whole house job is best done before carpet goes down or in a week when the house can be in some disarray. If you are also having outdoor lighting or security lighting done, scheduling them together is cheaper than two separate visits.