How to...Light Your Kitchen

I saw a woman in the store yesterday, so clearly frustrated with the prospect of lighting her kitchen. Renovation should be fun, but you need to know what you are doing. Lighting a kitchen is much more difficult now. Our parents and grandparents segmented the house to formal living room, kitchen and den. The trend now is to combine two or three of these elements into one great room. This impacts appliance specifications certainly, but more so in lighting design.

To review previous posts, proper lighting encompasses, task, ambient, accent and decorative elements. So lets talk our aforementioned friend off the ledge. Following are basic ideas.

First, for our task element, lets use some recessed lights. We could have used track as well, but recessed seems to be preferred in new construction. We will space them 12-24 inches from the cabinets and 4 to 5 feet apart.



Next lets buy some under counter lighting, which will light the counters(that came off wrong).

Her task light is now complete....



Now I have no idea what the specifications actually are....So lets assume an island in the middle in a larger footprint.

Lets place a semi flush fixture in the middle for ambient (up lighting) that will also serve a decorative function



Then for accent lighting, lets monopoint some 12v track heads at her art....



The decorative/accent pieces are all assumptions, but when starting a lighting plan, specify task first then add the other elements.



If you have a lighting issue, then send me an mailto:steve.sheinkopf@yaleappliance.com