Quote Originally Posted by Poolsean View Post
Since this got bumped to the top, it's worth mentioning that the brightness of the light didn't depend on 120 volts or 12 volts. It's the WATTS of the light that is the indicator of the brightness. Actually, lumins to be more technical...but definately not voltage.
Absolutely. When we re-did our kitchen we went from the old, big, ugly cans to mostly 12v units of track lighting and mini-cans. We use 50watt PAR-16s and I get the widest flood pattern available--You can get very wide or medium wide floods. Or you can get wide or narrow spots. With everything on full you can practically get a sun-tan!

We also re-did our house office as it's directly off the kitchen and in there, the 50w units were too bright and I put in 35w floods instead. Much better.

The only real drawback I see to 12v is that the bulbs are a little harder to get and quite expensive. Also, switching to fluorescent doesn't seem to be possible (although 12v fluorescent lamps exist for portable use).