Lighting in Auckland

When To Call Us

When You Need a Lighting Electrician

The most common call we get is the halogen downlight swap. A house full of 50W halogens running hot, fading, and chewing through power. Modern LED downlights pull a fraction of the load, run cool enough to sit safely in insulated ceilings (when the right IC-F rated unit is used), and last ten times as long. We cover the full process on our recessed LED downlights page. According to EECA, lighting is one of the easiest places for a household to cut energy use, and a full LED retrofit usually pays itself back inside a few years on power bills alone.

Dimmers are the next most common request, and the one that catches people out most often. Old leading-edge dimmers paired with new LED bulbs is a recipe for buzzing, flickering, and a narrow dim range that never quite goes off. Trailing-edge dimmers matched to compatible LED drivers fix it. We carry the brands that play nicely together so we are not running site-by-site experiments.

Outdoor and garden lighting is the third bucket, and it is busy from spring through summer. New decks wanting step lighting, gardens wanting path bollards, driveways wanting motion-activated security floods. See our dedicated garden and pathway lighting page for the full scope. The work needs IP-rated fittings, weatherproof junction boxes, and proper cable depth, especially when going through lawn and garden beds. Coastal properties need stainless and marine-grade hardware on top, because regular zinc-plated kit corrodes inside two winters in the salt air.

The fourth bucket is renovations and feature lighting. Kitchens with under-cabinet strip and pendant clusters over the island. Lounges with cove lighting and architectural downlight grids. Bathrooms with IP-rated downlights and demister-integrated mirror lights. We work alongside interior designers and architects on the spec, then do the install and sign-off ourselves.

The last bucket is fault finding and repair. A pendant that suddenly stops working, an outdoor fitting that fills with water after a storm, a bank of downlights where two have gone dark and the rest are flickering. These are usually quick visits, but they need someone who can read the wiring and diagnose without ripping the whole circuit out.

Services Under Lighting

What a Lighting Contractor Covers

The Lighting Contractor category covers everything from a single dimmer swap through to a full architectural lighting plan for a new build. Click any service below for the full details, or call us if your job spans more than one.

Where We Work

Lighting Across Auckland

Inner-city villas (Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden, Remuera, Herne Bay) come with high stud heights, ornate plaster ceilings, and original picture rails. Pendant work in those spaces wants careful demolition, often a scaffold or mobile tower, and a sympathetic eye for the period. We do a lot of replication work in those suburbs, marrying modern LED tech and proper wiring to fittings that look right for the era.

Modern builds across Hobsonville Point, Albany, and East Auckland are the opposite end of the spectrum. Architectural LED strip in coves and stairwells, downlight grids spaced precisely to the ceiling plan, smart dimmer integration with Lutron, Wiser, or Hue. As a Wiser lighting controls approved installer, we handle the full commissioning. Wiring is generally clean and accessible, so the focus shifts to getting the lighting design right and the controls programmed properly.

Coastal homes (Devonport, Takapuna, Milford, Bucklands Beach, Muriwai) need IP-rated outdoor fittings and salt-resistant fixings. Most off-the-shelf outdoor lights are not built for what an Auckland west coast winter throws at them. We spec marine-grade hardware, IP65 minimum on anything exposed, and stainless screws and brackets so the install lasts.

Commercial fitouts in the CBD, Newmarket, and Parnell are usually about retail display lighting, office task lighting, or efficiency retrofits. A retail tenant moving in often wants the entire lighting plan changed before opening day. An office wanting to cut its power bill goes from old fluoro panels to LED panels and gets the payback inside two years.

Heritage properties are their own bracket. Listed villas and character homes where you cannot just punch new downlights through ornate ceilings. We work in surface-mounted and pendant solutions that respect the building, and we wire them to current code so the homeowner is not carrying old risk.

About Totally Amped Electrical

Why Choose Us for Lighting

We have been trading since 2009, and every electrician on the team is EWRB-registered. Lighting is one of the highest-volume jobs we run, so we have seen most of the failure modes (the buzzing dimmer, the IC-rated downlight that was not, the outdoor fitting wired off a single weatherproof box that was not actually weatherproof) and we know how to spec around them on day one.

We coordinate with interior designers and architects on feature lighting plans, and we are happy to walk through a lighting design with the homeowner before any cables go in. Most lighting jobs go in alongside other electrical work, so check our pages on electrical renovations if your lighting is part of a wider reno, or new build wiring if you are starting from scratch. The full services list is broken down by GBP category.

If you are not sure where your job fits, just call. The triage takes a couple of minutes and we will tell you whether it is a single-visit job or a multi-day install before we book it in.

Are LED downlights safe with insulation?

Only if the downlight is rated for it. The rating you want is IC-F (Insulation Contact, Fire-rated), which means the fitting can sit in direct contact with ceiling insulation without overheating or creating a fire risk. Older non-IC halogen downlights had to have a clearance gap cut into the insulation around them, which left a thermal bridge and a fire concern. Any new downlight install we do in an insulated ceiling goes in IC-F rated as standard. If you have older non-IC fittings still in place, that is a worthwhile job to look at.

Why do not my LEDs dim properly?

Almost always a dimmer compatibility problem. Old leading-edge dimmers were designed for incandescent and halogen bulbs that draw a smooth steady load. LED bulbs and drivers behave differently, so an old dimmer paired with a new LED bulb gives you buzzing, flickering, a narrow dim range that never gets to off, or just nothing at all. The fix is a trailing-edge dimmer matched to LED drivers known to work with it. We carry the brands that play together cleanly, so the install is one visit rather than a series of swap-and-test rounds.

What is the difference between IP54 and IP65 outdoor lights?

IP ratings have two digits. The first is dust ingress, the second is water. IP54 means decent dust resistance and protection against water splashes from any direction, which is fine for sheltered outdoor spots like under an eave. IP65 is fully dust-tight and protected against low-pressure water jets, which is what you want for anything fully exposed to weather, hose-down areas, or driveways and gardens. We default to IP65 minimum on anything truly outdoor, and IP54 only on covered exterior spaces.

Do you install smart lighting?

Yes. Lutron, Wiser, Philips Hue, and a few others all get installed regularly. The key with smart lighting is that the underlying switchgear and wiring still has to be done properly. A smart system bolted onto undersized cable or shared circuits will frustrate the user. We plan the wiring around the smart system from day one (dedicated neutrals at every switch position, the right driver compatibility, control wiring run to where the hub sits) so the install behaves the way the brochure said it would.

Can you match a heritage pendant fitting to current code?

Yes, and we do it often in Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden, and similar villa suburbs. The original pendant fitting stays as the visible piece, but we replace the wiring tail, the ceiling rose internals, and any junction boxes with modern compliant gear. The look stays period-correct, the wiring meets AS/NZS 3000, and the homeowner is not carrying decade-old fabric flex inside the ceiling space.