Lighting Your Kitchen
I have a thing for light fixtures, the more unique and unusual the better. My kitchen style is warm and timeless with traditional roots and we went with repurposed conversation inducing red Edison gramophone horn lights over our dining table. They are a bold statement-type of lighting choice. They provide the lighting we need and I lovelove love them.
Red Edison gramophone horn lights
In any space, layering and controlling your lighting allows you to achieve the quality and quantity of light you need at any time of day or for any task that you are performing.
Lighting details in the kitchen are part of the plan that seems to get very little attention unless an architect or designer are part of the team, and they tend not to feel as important to clients as other elements but trust me, it’s worth putting some thought into.
The layers to consider in your kitchen are:
Overall or ambient lighting
Task lighting
Accent or decorative lighting
In a kitchen we generally look to light the overall space and then layer in task lighting in specific working areas.
Lighting layers
The three layers of lighting to consider
1. Overall or Ambient Lighting
The most popular way to address overall lighting these days is with recessed lights – for example, pot lights. Less popular options are track lights and flush-mounted fixtures.
Pot lights
Unobtrusive with flush trims to the ceiling
They come in 4”, 5” or 6” diameters
They illuminate in a downward column. This means that you need a good number of them to create enough overlapping light to provide enough coverage and minimize the shadows from one lighting section to another.
You can also get gimbal versions to allow you to direct the light at any angle.
Now they come in LEDs, so the heat and energy consumption issues are no longer a concern. LEDs will be discussed next week.
Gimbal Pot Light
Track lights
Have a bad rap for being a bit ugly but the more modern ones that are available these days can be a really effective design element
You can add and move heads to suit your lighting needs and minimize the shadowing
Flush mount fixtures
Shine in all directions including the ceiling which means that the light will bounce off the ceiling and then come down, making the space feel lighter and brighter with far fewer fixtures
Do not offer focused or adjustable directive lighting as in the other two options.
Something to note here is that there isn’t a one-or-none option. You can have a combination of types as is best suited to your kitchen and lighting needs.
2. Task Lighting
Regardless of which style of overall lighting you choose, task lighting in a kitchen is an absolute must.
Undercabinet lighting is the best task lighting that you can use to light up your countertop surface. There are 2 main options here –
Puck lights
Continuous lighting (which comes in LED strips or rope lighting)
Both can be concealed in your cabinetry with various types of detailing and whatever that detail is relates to the level of cabinetry that you purchase.
Budget level product: the lights will simply be stuck on underneath the upper cabinets with little camouflage. You will see the housing or strip when you open your doors or look under the upper unit.
Non-recessed under-cabinet lighting
Non-recessed under-cabinet lighting
Mid-range product: the puck light hole is drilled into the bottom of the upper unit and then a secondary bottom is added inside the cabinet to cover the hole and the wires.
High-end product: a loose valence is screwed to the upper cabinetry in long lengths and then finished with a panel that recesses under that. The fixtures and wires are not visible so it's a nice visual detail, but you will end up paying more for this.
Another area that you may have need of a task light would be over a sink. This will most likely be switched independently of the rest of the room.
3. Accent lighting
This is where we can have a whole lot of fun and really amp up the personality of your design.
Pendants over an island, peninsula, dining table, or sink.
Chandeliers.
Rope/strip lights at the top of your cabinetry, behind your crown or below, underneath your toe kicks.
Gimbal pot lights to highlight some artwork that you may have in your kitchen.
Now that we've covered the types of light, we need to control it.
The more control you have, the better it is for you to ensure you have just what you need, where and when you need it, and where you want to turn it on and off from.
You’ll probably have your overall light switches at the entrance to your kitchen, maybe even 3-way or even 4-way switches if you have multiple entrances to your room. Typically, we’d want to have a different switch for the pendants, a different switch for the task lighting, and a different switch for the accent lighting. All of these can be with dimmers as desired.
Planning ahead is key!
The wiring infrastructure for all of your lights, switches and outlets is behind the drywall. Therefore, this is really something you’re going to want to put some thought into because changing out where a pot light, wall sconce or dining table light is after the fact will require opening up drywall.
So I've convinced you to put thought into your lighting...what now?
How do we communicate those details? Typically, the ceiling lighting plan is what’s called a “reflective ceiling plan” or RCP. This view is as if you were looking from above, down through the ceiling, at a mirror installed one foot below the ceiling level, this shows a reflected image of the ceiling above.
The lighting directions will be on both the RCP as well as the elevation drawings. They will both have electrical symbols showing switch locations, and the number and types of lights that they activate, so the electrical team knows what they are doing. Often this is part of the plan gets omitted unless an architect or a designer is part of the professional team that is part of the renovation. Next week I will discuss how LED lighting works.
For more information, check out our podcast All Things Renovation at www.AllThingsRenovation.com . The second series of episodes focuses on kitchen renovations.