LED Retrofit for Lightolier Recessed Cans

My house has lots of recessed lighting (30+ cans). I replaced the halogens with CFLs when we moved in, but as those are starting to wear out, I wanted to transition to LED for many reasons, most notably, the instant-on is a real improvement over the CFLs. (When CFLs are upside-down like they are in a recessed can, the mercury collects near the top of the bulb and takes longer to vaporize since it's so much further from the anode and cathode).
They sell a number of different recessed LED retrofit kits that are intended to replace the existing trim around the bulb for a cleaner look. However, most of these are intended for use with the most common style of recessed light where the metal trim is a two-piece setup, and you remove the bottom part of the trim that forms the clean meeting with the rough drywall hole, and the rest of the socket stays up in the hole. (Example) Thus most of the retrofit kits have spring-loaded arms intended to catch on the rough can behind the trim, and typically have a loose wire connected to the E26 bit that threads into the socket to provide power, but not actually support the weight of the LED and driver.

As you may be able to guess since I'm writing this post, my recessed lights are different, and this style really won't work. I have Lightolier Lytecasters, which have a socket that connects directly to the reflector, which is all one piece and friction fits into the ceiling to form the external trim. This is the 1170, with an 1103 socket.

I was pretty sure that I had no option other than the regular screw-in LED bulbs (they look exactly like the BR30s they replace), but when I tried those, I had mixed success. The reason for this is that LEDs do generate some heat, and in a recessed ceiling fixture, the heat pools up near the socket, which happens to also be near the driver circuitry that converts AC to DC. Overheating the driver circuit is the most common cause of premature LED failure (all it takes is one questionable solder joint on the circuit board), and I just had one die the other day. The retrofit bulbs seem to be a little more resistant to that problem because they're in direct contact with the metal of the can, so the entire fixture becomes a heat sink.

A co-worker handed me a set of Cree CR6 retrofits that he had sitting in storage (wrong color temperature), and because the socket is part of the bulb still, I was cautiously optimistic.

I stumbled across this and this that implied it should work, so I confirmed that they do, and I thought that it might be useful to document it briefly.

You have to remove the internal plastic trim piece to make room for the bulb. It twists and pulls out.

It isn't a perfect fit, even with the plastic trim piece removed, because the metal spring ears that hold the socket and the canister together hit the top of the bulb, near the grey ridged part. I ended up using some pliers to bend the ears of the spring out so that they didn't contact the bulb anymore. Top shots are before, bottom are after. It may be necessary to fiddle a bit with the interaction between the socket and the can to get the bulb flush with the can, but it should be doable, and these bulbs almost completely cover the can's trim.


I now have 5 of these installed, and they seem happy, though time will be the only way to see if they last longer. There is also a smaller housing (1071) that is installed in some of the places in my house. The 1071 doesn't have the internal trim to remove like the 1170 and is only a little larger than a standard BR30. I don't think that the CR6s will fit in those without clipping off the metal legs, but may try a different form of retrofit the next time I have a CFL fail.