Tips on planning your kitchen lighting

There are two needs for lighting in your kitchen. One is to generally light up the room. The other is to put light right where you need it most, the work surfaces. Your work surfaces are the kitchen sink, the counters, the stove, and the island and/or table.

The decor of the kitchen should play a part in choosing the style of fixtures you want to use to light your kitchen. General lighting is a good place to add texture and color as well as light. Chandeliers and pendant lights come in every texture, style, color, and type you can imagine. Use all one type, or set an area off by using a different style. This could be using one style over the table and another over the island. While you are planning your general lighting, think about glass door cabinets. Lights inside those cabinets will show off the contents, and after all that is why you put glass doors. Using glass shelving will allow the light to filter down to lower shelves.

Your kitchen lights are for adding accents to and showing off the beauty of your kitchen.

You can do task lighting this way, but often you will lose the impact with too many pendants. Depending on the cabinet design, you could use under cabinet lights for the counters. If your cabinets don’t line up with your work surfaces or you don’t care for under-cabinet lighting, can lights make a good source of task lighting. Can lights make very little impact on style, and add light where you need it most. You can even have those can lights on different switches by area for better control of where the extra light shines. Don’t forget to light up the sink area. Stoves have hoods for ventilation that usually have lights built-in. While your task lighting will show off the beauty of your kitchen, it is primarily for extra lighting in those places you use the most.

Your kitchen lighting is a vital part of your kitchen design, and your fixtures should accent your style.

This is a great place to add a bit of flair to your room. At Edgewood Cabinetry LLC, we would love to show you more about how to create your perfect kitchen.