SATCO Lighting S11631 12W LED Direct Wire Downlight, 3.5in, 3000K, 120V, Dimmable, Round, Remote Driver, Black

It is a remote driver downlight, meaning the LED driver sits away from the light engine rather than in the trim, and it is direct wire to a 120V 60Hz supply. Plan the rough-in around a driver location you can reach, because that is where the line connection lands. There is no lamp to buy, the LED is integrated into the fixture.

The fixture carries a wet location rating, so a shower ceiling or a covered soffit is within its rating. It is classed as an indoor fixture, so it is not intended for fully exposed exterior ceilings. It is cETLus Listed.

Dimmable on a 120V line voltage circuit, and it is listed to California Title 24, which matters if you are permitting work in California where residential recessed lighting has to be on the compliant list. It is also FCC compliant and RoHS compliant.

Each S11631 puts out 840 lumens at 12 watts in a 3000K warm white. That is comparable in output to a traditional 60W-plus incandescent can, so for general ceiling illumination most layouts space them on 3 to 4 foot centers in a residential or light commercial space. Color temperature is fixed at 3000K, it is not CCT selectable, and wattage is not selectable either, so every unit on the job will match.

A remote driver unit puts the electronics outside the trim, so the part in the ceiling stays shallow (3.00 inches here) and the driver can be serviced or swapped without pulling the light out of a finished ceiling. The tradeoff is you need an accessible spot for the driver and a run between it and the fixture. An all-in-one canless light with the driver in an attached junction box is quicker to wire but puts the failure-prone component inside the ceiling cavity.

It is catalogued as a retrofit recessed downlight and installs with spring clips at the ceiling, so it goes into an existing 3.5 inch opening without a new housing. Satco publishes spring installation instructions for it. Because it is direct wire rather than an Edison-base screw-in, you need a supply connection at the opening, not just a working lamp socket.

Rated at 50,000 average hours, which at 8 hours a day of use is roughly 17 years of service. The body is aluminum, which helps pull heat off the LED in an enclosed ceiling cavity. For hospitality or multi-family work where relamping labor is the real cost, that rated life is the number to standardize on.