Changing kitchen spotlights - easy job?

[Smophelia]

Hi all,
I've recently moved into my first home and I'd like to change the kitchen spotlights as they're grubby white plastic. I'm a bit confused on what I need to do - is this a diy job or do I need an electrician? I mean the round bezel bit that surrounds the bulb - photo attached. Thanks for any advice you can give.

Give it a try

Are you just wanting to change them for new spotlights? Or take the bezels out to clean them?

It looks like they’re the old type of spots, not LEDs. I’d get an electrician in to change the whole lot. We’ve just had ours done in one room - it cost a couple of hundred £s for 8 spots replaced.

Usually spotlights are a single fixed unit, so the bezel you can see will be attached to the actual fixture rather than being replaceable in its own. Providing you take photos of how each is wired up as you remove it, it’s an easy DIY job to swap the unit out.

First thing to establish is whether they are mains or low voltage.
If they are low voltage with halogen bulbs you can't just replace them with modern, mains voltage LED's.

We had low voltage ones in our previous house and my OH (who was a Sparks) removed the transformers and rewired.

It depends...

Having had similar with our kitchen lights I looked into this. By my reckoning that is a GU10 spotlight (has an LED bulb with bayonet fitting)

If the bezel comes off separately you can fairly easily replace it - something like https://www.lighting-direct.co.uk/round-design-downlight-frame-white.html or try B&Q/Tool Station etc.

If it is part of the whole light you will need to pull it out and replace it either with a GU10 fire rated downlight such as https://www.toolstation.com/fire-rated-cast-gu10-downlight/p49149 which will require rewiring but you will continue to use the spotlight bulbs you have

Alternatively switch to an LED fire rated downlight - something like https://www.toolstation.com/integral-led-ecoguard-fire-rated-ip65-integrated-downlight-dimmable/p98444 which will again require rewiring. It will be much cheaper to run but is likely to require complete replacement after 25,000 hours of use - this is over 20 years of normal use so probably not a mjaor concern!

In terms of connecting up/rewiring its fairly easy to do if you are a fairly confident DIYer as its just a case of (first switching off the electricity to the house) pulling one out and then reattaching another in its place but be careful as pulling out the fitting can damage the ceiling.

When we did ours we got a local electrician to do it (after DH said he would but never got round to!) - he charged us £40 per light all in.

I think in photo two I can see one of the hinges. These type lights are nearly always held in place by two springs that clamp back on themselves once out into the void. If you get fingers under the white bezel and pull down the unit should come out. You can then update thread with what you’re looking at. Sometimes the bezels will unscrew and be replaceable and sometimes not. They are standard GU10 fitments for the bulbs so if you just want to replace them go buy them and then 30s diy job.

if you want to replace the whole unit it is a simple DIY job but it will depend on your level of confidence around electricity. Isolate circuit from consumer unit, pull light unit out. Unwire and then rewire. Very very simple but as above electrocution is bad etc etc so this is what I’d do rather than telling you what you should do.

Oh. And if pulling out watch your fingers as the spring hinges will snap back once out of the cavity. Got that T-shirt and it bloody hurts.

Thanks all this is really useful. I can see a clip too so I will pull it out and investigate further. The other ones do indeed have gu10 bulbs in them. Hadn't considered the fire rating angle - would it be worth replacing all of them with fire rated ones from a safety perspective?