Kitchen Lighting Help?

[Eliza Cross]

Most cabinets have a lip along the front edge. It may be 1/2" or 3/4", but it is usually enough to conceal a 1" light. Many people purchase expensive, difficult-to-install light valances to increase the lip, but unless you want the valance for its beauty (some people do), it is unnecessary.

Thank you so much for posting the photo, FG. Now I have lip envy -- like Anna's, the bottom of our cabinets are flush. To further complicate matters, there are two curved corners holding small shelves on one side of each of the rows of cabinets, that seem difficult to trim. But the price of those halogens, and easy availability of the bulbs, is really attractive. There has got to be a way. . .

By the way, that strip of outlets along the top of your backsplash is genius.

[Fat Guy]

The outlet strip is great -- it really should be more commonly deployed.

Even if you don't have a lip or valance, those little Home Depot fixtures are pretty attractive (as are any number of other fixtures like them). The angles are still going to prevent anyone who's taller than the bottom of the cabinets from seeing the actual wiring. All they'll see are the individual white fixtures. I've seen them installed this way in glass-fronted shelves used to display art objects, and they look quite good. Or, you can always do the wiring inside the cabinets and punch through above each fixture, so the fixtures appear to have no wires going to them.

[JSD]

We have very hot summer temperatures and a friend had halogen lights and had warned me about the heat they put out.

We have fluorescent undercabinet lights. I like them, and buy replacement bulbs from Bulbman where prices are good. I just take a burned out bulb in with me and they find a replacement. It turns out they're a chain and do mail order too. Their website is here. Only once have they not been able to find a replacement bulb, for a lamp I bought at a rummage sale.

The lights are installed at the back of the cabinet, and are covered with a plastic screen. We don't have any unsightly wires. The lights stretch the length of the cabinet, and look fine to me. If I knew how to upload a picture, I would.

[Eliza Cross]

We have fluorescent undercabinet lights.  I like them, and buy replacement bulbs from Bulbman where prices are good. 

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Now I feel guilty for saying fluorescents are ugly.

JSD, thanks for the tip; I visited Bulbman.com and saw that they have full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs, which seems like a good idea for the kitchen.

[Fat Guy]

Fluorescent bulbs are a heck of a lot better today than they were even ten years ago, and they are cool and energy efficient. Halogen lights give better light, though. There are a lot of scientific sounding measurements out there, used to support the claim that fluorescent lighting is now as good as incandescent or halogen. But I've never experienced that. I would be fine with using a fluorescent fixture, with a modern full-spectrum bulb, to provide general lighting for a room. I lived with high-quality fluorescent in the kitchen, and it was a serviceable arrangement. But the light from halogen bulbs is an order of magnitude better, and there are two areas where I want the best possible light: for reading, and for cooking prep work. So I am now using halogen in my kitchen and office (where, by the way, I used surface-mounted wiring at a savings of about a trillion dollars over what I would have had to pay an electrician). I wouldn't go back. When I got done installing the halogen task lights in the kitchen and switched them all on for the first time, I was like "Holy crap, this is so much better I can't believe it!"

[JSD]

I have an Ott desk lamp that I bought at a garage sale . The full spectrum Ott bulbs are $25, but I bought a full spectrum light at Bulbman (of course) for a lot less, and use the lamp for sewing, etc. The light it puts out is hard to describe. It's more intense, maybe. But for looking at small stitches, color, etc, it is excellent. I found out that you don't need an Ott lamp, you just need a fluorescent lamp. So you could use a full spectrum in an undercabinet fluorescent light, which I never thought about before. I might buy some and experiment a little.

[Eliza Cross]

Hoo, boy. The electrician is coming out to do an estimate next week, but the scheduler asked if there was attic space over the ceiling, which there isn't. She said recessed lights were going to be "tricky" on that ceiling. I'll report back, but I'm thinking "tricky" = "expensive," or perhaps, "impossible."

So the next question is, does anyone have a good system of overhead kitchen lighting that might work on a slanted ceiling? I really appreciate all of your comments.

[petite tête de chou]

If you don't have ceiling access you might consider a suspended track-lighting system. You will need a extensions that will drop the length of track to the level you want it.

As far as the track heads are concerned, there's a wide selection available. Some have halogens (non-low-voltage), some take regular "A" lamps and some are very decorative. This way you will be able to angle the lights where you want them.

There's quite a few parts required but it's starting to sound like this system might work for your application.

[Mottmott]

I agree that there are very attractive track lights out there. With such high ceilings as you have, the track lights will bring the light closer to you than recessed lights will. And I've even seen systems where the track has been (home) made out of copper tubing to take a wide array of fixtures. Not sure how it was done.

I strongly recommend considering low voltage type lights. They cost more up front but with energy prices going where they're going, they'll pay for themselves.

[Dave the Cook]

I'm not in favor of track lighting in this case. The premium you pay for track lighting is its mobility. If they're 12 feet up, you're not going to move them -- you're going to set them once and leave them alone. Moreover, unless you're willing to pay for expensive, long-throw, nearly focusable fixtures (we're talking about something close to theatrical lighting, or at the least, high-end retail fixtures), the effect is going to be pretty close to ambient lighting, anyway. Finally, as others have suggested, you could go through all of that, and end up obscuring the lighting with the simple act of standing at the counter. So why pay extra?

I would employ Fat Guy's surface-wiring suggestion with a set of three or four inexpensive 150-watt capacity pendants (something like this, though you can pay even less for simple metal shades) in a line parallel with the outside wall:

This will give you plenty of ambient illuminatation, and enhance the line of the ceiling as well. Supplement those with undercabinet lighting (I'd go for halogen, but good fluorescents will still be better than what you've got) for tasks, and you're all set. You can even paint the outside of the pendant shades for color accents, if you want to draw attention to them -- spray paint works fine, though there's special translucent paint for glass. Since they're eight or nine feet up, it's possible that no one will know the difference.

[Eliza Cross]

I promised to report back as I figured out this kitchen lighting dilemma. I've officially solved 1/3 of the problem. To date, I have removed two of the dark, old funky (and fake) beams in the kitchen, patched all the drywall and repainted. Then, my dad and I removed the horrible old light fixture that was hanging over the sink and replaced it with two cream frosted glass pendant lights with halogen bulbs. The light is so much better already, and I am encouraged.

I already had paint and patching materials, so to date I have spent $90 on a tall ladder and $150 for the two Tiella pendant lights from The Great Indoors. (I'm also waiting for a $25 rebate, so the total cost will be $125. Lowe's had these lights for about $50 each, but as Murphy's Law would have it, they just stopped stocking them in my area.)

I'll post a few photos as part of my progress report.

Let's start with the "BEFORE" photo:

Here's the same area with the new pendant lights:

A close-up of the old light (brace yourself - it's reeeeeeallly ugly):

And the new lights:

There are still two more ugly fixtures to be removed. I purchased an 8-foot track lighting system, but ended up returning it because once I got it home it seemed like the height of the ceiling (15 feet) made it impractical. I'm still leaning toward recessed lights for the rest of the kitchen plus undercabinet lights. Juno makes a special recessed light for slanted ceilings and there are several online stores that sell the light plus trim kit for around $55 each. The big expense will be installation - the most recent estimate was $1300 to install 7 lights. Ouch!

Stay tuned, and I deeply appreciate - and welcome - your thoughts and advice!

[johnder]

I recently installed some xenon mini-track lighting from Juno in my kitchen and I love it.

I am using the Juno Trak 12 linear lighting solution. It is basically a very small track light that you can choose the type of fixture you want, either Halogen or Xenon.

Here is the link for the various fixtures, and here are the tracks and transformers.

I went for the Single Xenon 10W D3.2.0 every 6 inches or so under the cabinet and used some of the remote tranformers to power them. I did a lot of research for undercounter lights and loves that with this solution you can have a mixture of downlights and wall washing by changing the heads and the color of the light is really pleasing.

But as I mentioned it was an expensive solution. You can special order them from Lowes and for what I needed (16 linear feet of track, 2 remote transformers and roughtly 35 light fixtures) it ran about 350 bucks.