Switch the circuit off first
Turn the light off at the switch, then turn off the breaker for that circuit at the breaker panel. Do not stand in water while you do it and do not touch the fixture itself. If water is coming through more than one fixture, or you cannot identify the circuit, kill the main breaker and call an electrician as well as us.
A wet fixture needs inspecting before it goes back into service, even if it works. Water tracks along conductors and sits inside a junction box where you cannot see it.
Why the light, and not the middle of the ceiling
A recessed downlight is a cylinder punched through the ceiling drywall into the attic. Older ones are not airtight, and even the sealed ones are a weak point. Water travelling across the top of your ceiling reaches the can, runs around the outside of the housing, and comes out of the trim.
The same is true of a pendant or a flush fixture: the electrical box is a cut-out, and the cut-out is lower resistance than the intact board around it. The fixture is not the cause. It is the drain.
What it tells you about how much water is up there
Water appearing at a fixture means enough has accumulated to pool on the ceiling and find a path. That is more water than a stain implies. Expect the insulation above to be wet across a wider area than the visible damage suggests, and expect it to keep coming while the dam is there and the roof is melting.
How to tell which one you have
It is probably an ice dam
Snow on the roof, ice at the eave, top-floor fixture, and it started during a thaw or a sunny afternoon. Often several fixtures in a line, following the run of a ceiling joist.
It is probably plumbing
The fixture sits directly under a bathroom or a kitchen. Water appears when something runs upstairs and stops when it does not.
It is probably a vent or flashing fault
A single fixture near a soil pipe, a bathroom fan duct or a chimney, leaking in rain as well as in snow.
What to do in the next ten minutes
- Switch off the circuit at the breaker panel before anything else.
- Bucket underneath, and keep people out of the room if the ceiling is sagging.
- Photograph the fixture, the ceiling and the breaker you switched off.
- Do not put a bulb back in or re-energise the circuit until an electrician has looked at it.
- Call us to take the ice off, and tell dispatch that water is coming through a fixture — that moves you up the list.
Questions people ask
Not necessarily, but it has to be checked. Modern cable sheathing keeps water off the conductors for a while, and the usual damage is corrosion inside the junction box and at the terminals rather than along the run. That is an electrician's call, not ours and not a guess from a photograph.
Taking the dam off the eave stops the supply of water, and that is same-day work where we have a crew in range. What is already sitting in your ceiling will keep draining for a while after the roof is clear.
Sudden water damage to fixtures and contents is the kind of loss most homeowners policies are written to handle, but what yours pays for depends on your policy and your adjuster. Photograph the fixture before anyone removes it — that photograph is worth more to the claim than the fixture is.