Can you fit recessed spotlights in a concrete ceiling?

Technically yes, in practice almost never. A recessed spot needs space behind the ceiling, and in solid concrete that space is not there. You would have to mill tens of millimetres deep and still get a cable to it. In nearly every concrete situation a surface-mounted spot is the answer, not a recessed one.

Why concrete is different from plasterboard

With a plasterboard ceiling you cut a hole and push the spot into the cavity behind it. The ceiling is a thin plane with air behind it, and that air is where the spot and the wiring disappear.

Concrete has no such cavity. A concrete floor is solid, often 200 millimetres or more, and your upstairs neighbour is standing on it. A hole 68 millimetres wide and 30 millimetres deep is not something you simply drill: that is core drilling with a diamond bit, it makes dust and water, and you run into the reinforcement.

Then there is the cable problem. Even once the hole exists, a conduit has to reach it. In concrete that means chasing or a surface trunking, and then you have lost the clean ceiling you wanted recessed spots for in the first place.

What to do instead

For a concrete ceiling there are three routes that do work.

Surface-mounted spots. You screw those onto the ceiling instead of into it. They need no hole and no cavity, only a fixing point and a connection. The Largo is made for exactly this, and the Faro tilts so you can aim it. What a surface-mounted spot is and how it differs from a recessed one is in What is the difference between recessed and surface-mounted spotlights?

A track system. One feed point at the ceiling, and then you slide the spots along the track to wherever you want them. That saves you a conduit per spot, which in concrete is the most expensive part. The Vetra is a 3-circuit track spot; how to wire such a track is in How do you wire a 3-circuit track?

A suspended ceiling or a ceiling island. Hang a plasterboard sheet under the concrete and you have the cavity you need after all, and you can fit ordinary recessed spots. It costs height, but it is the only way to get a flat ceiling with recessed spots in a concrete room.

The exception: a concrete ceiling with a finish layer

Not every ceiling that feels like concrete is solid concrete. Two situations where it can be done:

• A grid ceiling or a lowered sheet under the concrete. Tap it: if it sounds hollow, there is space behind and you can measure how much.
• A hollow-core slab. Those have hollow channels, but they run in fixed positions and you may not simply drill into them. That is something to put to a structural engineer, not to judge by feel.

If there is space behind, the next question is how much. A Lyvo needs 27 millimetres of recess depth and that is one of the shallowest there is; the full overview is at recessed spotlights with a low recess depth.

If the concrete does have to be drilled

That is not a job for an ordinary drill and not a job to judge yourself. You are dealing with reinforcement you must not cut through, with the load-bearing structure of the building, and in a flat with someone else's floor.

Have an electrician or a contractor do it, and in an apartment block go through the owners' association first. A hole in a load-bearing floor is no longer a lighting choice.

The range is at surface-mounted spotlights and recessed spotlights. How to wire them once the hole exists is in How do you wire recessed spotlights?