A puck light is your best bet. Xenon bulbs are cooler than halogen. But to be fair, they both put out heat. I've been very successful with LED puck lights. There is no heat and the projection is great. You have to be careful though. There is a lot of junk out there. But look for a three watt unit- usually it has 3 one watt LED diodes in it. It's not as 'warm' as an incandescent, but it's not cool like fluorescent. Sort of in the middle. And it will effectively last forever. Good luck.

Those are the very lights I'm planning to use, if I ever find the time to finish building my upper cabs. My understanding is that xenon bulbs generate a fair bit of heat, but because they don't need a heavier glass enclosure like halogens do (halogens can explode when they fail, and have to be protected from being touched) they can be mounted out in the open like that, and the heat dissapates into the room fairly efficiently. In other words, they generate some heat but don't get terribly hot. Make sense? Fluorescents would run cooler and cheaper, and there are some very low-profile models available.

Elba1 : Here is a case of the blind leading the blind: "Someone recently posed a question about xenon under cab lights getting hot. I was at a lighting store today and asked about it. I was told there are "low voltage" lights and "line voltage" lights. It is the line voltage lights that can get pretty hot, whereas the low voltage lights get slightly warm at best. And now we have a batch of people reading it without posting any response that shows any critical thinking. The sales person who you spoke to and who said something offhand will have to backtrack a bit. Watts are the power consumed. All power turns into heat or light. The light produced also creates heat where it lands. How many watts? This is the question. Power consumed by LED and fluorescent is less heat and more light. Power consumed by ALL the others is more heat and less light. To equalize light output, they consume LOTS more Watts. Xenon, Halogen, etc: these are all incandescent. To learn more, and maybe try refuting some of what I have written here, learn about Lumen, which measures light generated. All Watts get turned into Lumen and heat. Xenon consume Watts which produce mostly heat, and some light too. If ANY bulb "only feels warm" it may be because the housing lets air move around it and carry warm air away from it. It's still a waste of money; it's mostly heat, for the Watts consumed. Then, you have to pay more again, for more air conditioning, to remove the heat... So, the housing may help to remove heat. BUT it's not a factor depending on whether it's low voltage or line voltage. The blind lead the blind. Anyone says anything and it gets reported. -- Felix Unger signed FU at the bottom of a note to his Odd Fellow roommate, and the playwright Neil Simon did not see the joke in this when he wrote it. It later became apparent to him when he saw audience reaction. .

First rule - never assume. What seems like an "obviously" or an "of course" to me hasn't been so much for most of the people we've talked to about doing our kitchen...so, no assuming. Anyway, as for your lighitng..why would it be "too much"? First and foremost, UC lighting is a task lighting and then secondary as an ambient light (some use for this and some don't). Lighting in glass cabinets is only an ambient/accent lighting, so it has nothing to do with if you have UC lighting or not. The real question is, do you want to use your UC lighting for ambient lighting or *only* task lighting? And if you plan on it (UC) for both, you'll probably want a dimmer for it. The UC lighting and the lights in the cabinets need to be on a separate switch...and it sounds like Sparky may not recognize that if he thinks it's "too much to do both", so don't assume that he knows to do that...make it very clear that's what you want. Lastly for now...it's always better to have too much light and turn it off than too little. And it's easier to install "too much light" when doing your reno. rather than trying to add it later.