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leds vs. zenon undercabinet lighting?

12 years ago

Redoing the entire kitchen and my electrician wanted to install undercabinet zenon lighting. When I went to check them out, the sales rep at the lighting store had me feel the heat emitted from the zenons and steered me towards the Kichler undercabinet LED strips. What is the best lighting for undercabinet task? I am installing them in one 72" cabinet section and one 36" section. Any expert or from experience advice?

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Comments (7)

David
12 years ago
I would suggest looking at LED. There is a continuation of the LED UCL DIY thread below.

Here is a link that might be useful: LED UCL DIY continuation
nutcake
12 years ago
We just had LED strips installed in our kitchen in lieu of halogen and Zenon because of the heat. We used the warm white lights. We are very happy with them with one exception. If they are close to another reflective surface, they cast stripes of light. We have some that are undercounter lights over a dark gray quartzite countertop that work fine. There is a slight reflection of a bar but I prefer that over the spotlight effect of the halogen puck lights. But some are under/over stainless steel shelves and the stripes of light from the row of bulbs reflecting on the stainless steel surface creates an optical illustion that hurts my eyes. If I had known that would happen, I wouldn't have put them there. So I suggest you get them to rig up a sample with the surface and see if it is a problem for you.
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I would go for something between 20 - 30 lumens per sq foot. Take a look at what environmentallights has to offer for warm white LED bars (just to see if the look is ok). Is there any particular reason to avoid the bars? The aluminium bar backing serves as a heat sink and provides rigidity to an otherwise flexible and possibly fragile pcb.
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I looked at many LED undercabinet lights, but the light quality is not as good as Xenon. I don't like the flat color rendition of LED and the cooler color temp. I ended up getting the stainless steel Kichler Xenon strip. The only benefit of LED, in my view, is the energy efficiency. But how long do you leave the undercabinet lights turned on every day? In our case, we don't turn it on that often so the energy savings would never pay for the extra cost. We are using LED on all of the other lights including the recessed room lights, because those will be turned on all the time.
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Even thin lights may show when you are sitting and look into the kitchen. It seems most new kitchen installs are done with a light rail added to hide the lights behind. We did an update several years ago and kept our old cabinets which had no light rail or moulding below the boxes. DH is rather handy and we bought some oak (our cabinets are oak) corner moulding about 3/4 or an inch wide. I got stain matched up at a good paint store. Cloverdale I believe and they can make stain to match if you bring in a door from your cabinets. We installed that below the cabinets and I stained and varnished the. They gave a little update to the cabinet look and do a great job of hiding our UCL's. They look like they were always on the cabinets and match perfectly. He also installed our UCL and drilled small holes in the bottom of the cabinet, fished the wire thru them and then behind, thru the wall studs up to a soffit where we have access. Wired in an on and off and dimmer switch in our Zephyr fan hood since it has lots of room in the metal body. Virtually no wire showing and the light switch is with the fan light switch. DH is so innovative!
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mcfreiz
12 years ago
i will have a shiny dark granite countertop installed and am concerned about the reflections. decided to go with LED lights from enviromentallights.com since they sell a diffuser which should blur the reflections if needed. also sell angled brackets that can point them towards the backsplash
dibgar
12 years ago
We used halogen strip lights in our kitchen a few years ago and we love the warm glow. The heat is not too bad, but it is enough so that I can soften butter by placing it in the cabinet above the lights.

Reflection is an issue with any lights above dark shiny granite. We minimized this by using the angled brackets suggested above by mcfreiz. We mounted the light strip above the bracket along the front edge of the cabinets and aimed the lights toward the backsplash. It doesn't eliminate all reflection, but it definitely helps so the lights are not "in your face". I never notice a reflection day-to-day unless I am intentionally looking for it.

We won't replace our halogen light strips in the kitchen, but we are considering some LEDs strips for our upcoming bathroom remodel. I will check out the thread suggested by davidtay.
sacto_diane
12 years ago
I also used LED lights from Environmentallights.com (Typo in the URL from mcfreiz)and am very happy with them. I used the dimmable light bars and bought various lengths to fit my cabs. The electrician that did the install was amazed that the total wattage for the entire kitchen was around 50 watts. I have the driver hooked to a dimmer and can control the brightness and no heat.

Diane

Here is a link that might be useful: Dimmable LED under cab light bars
wakefield52
9 years ago
If you go with LED under-counter lights do you do the strip or box? We are nearly ready to do under-counter and contractor and electrician want XENON because they are easy to install. They say we are not wired for the strips and that the XENON is not that hot but I hear differently from different people. I want a white light that can be dimmed under-counter for the leathered marble with white streaks counter-top.
David
9 years ago
You need to use direct wire LED lighting solutions like the Philips eW Profile or Maxlite.

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