Good morning Houzz!

We have a 14'7" x 20'6" area as part of a basement finishing plan. The space is rectangular with a 5' wide HVAC trunk line chase running the entire length of the back part of room. The trunk line chase comes down 18" from the 9' drywalled ceilings. There is room in the trunk line to install canless lights.

On the other end of the room is a 7' wide by 9' tall stone electric/linear fireplace bump-out with TV mounted above. The fireplace comes out 1' from the wall and is floor to ceiling.

We have been going back and forth on recessed can light placement in the basement because of the trunk line. We have a 22 x 15 living room on first floor with only four, 6" dimable cans and have no problem with lighting at night. 4 lights is way below the minimum required when you plug in the dimensions on the all of the lighting calculators.

There is no natural light in this room as the basement is totally underground. A sectional couch would end up being positioned under the trunk line chase facing the fireplace.

We've discussed 4-can placement - problem we see with that is if we put cans in the 5' wide chase, then we'd assume centering the remaining two cans in the 10' wide area and worry this won't look totally symmetrical.

We've discussed 6-can placement - we worry about a can being right in front of the TV mounted above fireplace and having to worry about glare.

Another option we thought about was split the width essentially into three and place a row of 2 or 3 cans every 5 feet. That would either give us 9-cans or 8 if we remove the one directly closest to and centered on the fireplace.

Pics below. We would appreciate any feedback. Thank you!