Oh.... pardon me... my bad. Just realized I should have posted this in the Lighting forum, so will do that now.

Mine do too, a little bit. I don't like it. And this is totally the correct forum!

I had understood it was the Halogen lights that melted chocolate & cooked cans. Xenon are supposed to be cool! And LEDs even moreso.

Interesting. I've yet to invest in under cabinet lighting. I'll be watching this thread.

Christine
Formerly C F Muehling

In my old kitchen we installed a Xenon strip light that just plugged into a wall outlet. I don't know the brand, I think BF just bought it from HD or Lowes. I was surprised how warm the inside of the old cabinet felt, considering that the bottom of the cabinet was solid wood. When we redid the kitchen, we bought WAC Xenon lighting strips and while there are more lights, they don't appear to be anywhere near as hot as that other strip was.

We put in led lights - a strip, but the warmer color and in the form of bulbs, not the rings of tiny lights you sometimes see with leds. We love them, and the cabs are not hot or warm at all - nor are the lights. They are the GE lights, and we got them at HD.

We have had xenon undercab lights for 5 yrs. They don't even get warm. No way to feel them inside the cabs at all. The bulbs last approx 8000 hrs and we have yet to change any. Use them every evening and when I am baking etc. Great light. c

Mine are LED strips from Lowe's. They are barely warm - I can put my hand on them after they've been on for hours. The cabinet doesn't get warm at all.

Helene

I'm the one with melted choc. chips. We have direct wire Kichler Xenon undercabinet lights. Boy they sure get warm/hot.

I have Xenon undercabinet lighting that is hardwired on dimmers and it does get warm. Our bulbs are suppose to last 50,000 hrs. We'll see, they are on all night sometimes!
I don't know if they would melt chocolate. Unfortunately, my pantries are in the hall and dark!

Halogen lights are hot (because they are incandescent). Xenon are in the same range of temperature (hot) for the same reason (because they are incandescent). Any words written about them being cooler is lying marketing, but it's also truthful because it is true too, but it's also a lie because there is still a massive amount of heat and the difference in Watts (heat) is almost irrelevant; it's almost the same heat from halogens or from xenons.

Watts consumed are the best fact to correlate your query to, because Watts measure power consumed, which creates heat.

Lights that are not hot are those that consume few Watts: LEDs and fluorescents.

hth

I've got xenon, and they can make it pretty warm to the touch if they're on high. We put them on a dimmer, so I usually have them fairly low (my preference). They just get warm at that level.

I have LED strips, directwired and on a dimmer switch. They are the warmer colored light and are very bright when on all the way. No heat.

We also have xenons (Kichler, 12v direct wire w/ 18w xenon bulbs - about 7 units installed under our cabinets about a year ago) and, while the cabinets directly above do get warm, they do not get hot. That's to be expected given that these are incandescents and will produce heat that will be absorbed into the cabinets if left on for long periods.

Ours are not dimmable but they do have a high/low switch and we keep it on low - unless the lights are being used to illuminate a task.

Will they damage wood cabinets? That depends on the wattage, the transfer rate of heat to the wood (which could be influenced by the design of the fixture and/or how it's mounted and the degree of air circulation) and how long the lights are left on. It might be enough to discolour some finishes or even bubble up some veneers directly above the lights (depending on the adhesive used - but I would expect that this would be extreme) but I wouldn't worry about anything truly wretched here - provided the light fixture is not overly enclosed.

Last year, I spoke with our cabinet supplier about the choices and they overwhelmingly recommended xenons.

FWIW

Thank you so much captsmethwick! I really appreciate your very helpful response.