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Electrical: Recessed Light Bulbs Keep Turning Off

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Here is an electrical problem that frustrates people. Recessed light fixtures will randomly turn off. It may be that you have a group of can lights on a switch and one or more will blink off. Why is this happening?

People will usually replace the bulb first, but it may not be the bulb. It may be that the fixture is getting too hot and shutting off. There is a high limit switch in the light fixture, that when it senses the temperature is too high, will cut the power to the fixture. You can try a few simple fixes. The bulbs are likely producing too much heat. The heat gets trapped inside the fixture which trips the high limit switch off. How about trying a lower wattage bulb? You could even go with LED bulbs that produce very little heat, but that might require you to replace the bulbs in all fixtures as they don’t look exactly the same when illuminated, and they are cheap. Try going from a 60 watt down to a 40 watt bulb…it may work or it may not.

You can also keep the current bulb in place but simply lower its position in the can. To do this, remove the bulb and loosen the wing nut at the side of the can. The socket will travel up and down after you loosen it. Lower the socket closer to the floor a few inches, replace the bulb and see if it stays illuminated. If it does, lower the bulbs in all the cans so that they look uniform.