When we began making design choices for our kitchen remodel, we were focused on cabinets, counters, flooring... and we did not pay enough attention to lighting. It's one area of the remodel where I wish we had sought out some professional advice.

This post tells our story, and is *NOT* a substitute for getting professional advice for your own remodel. It's more a cautionary tale... though we are happy with where we ended up.

I hope others who have lessons to share about kitchen lighting will add them in as comments on this thread!

Early in the process, we had a vague conversation about energy-efficient lighting with the kitchen designer. Because we had recently replaced our standard, mid-1980s fluorescent overhead fixture with recessed light cans using halogen bulbs, we thought we might be able to get by with not doing anything. She talked us out of that.

We were waffling a bit on what to do with the ceiling, because we had just paid for removing the fluorescent fixture work a year ago... but in the end, we decided to take out the soffit over the kitchen, get the "popcorn" texture on the ceiling removed (in the kitchen, family room, dining room, and entry). This would give us the opportunity to reuse, in new locations, the recessed light cans.

Our ceiling, before: {{gwi:1790792}}

Just after demolition, when the walls were still open to the studs, our contractor verified with us that we wanted undercabinet lighting. We didn't actually look at different types of fixtures at that point, and I did not realize that if we wanted to do low-voltage lights, or LED lights, under the cabinets.... we needed to specify that desire before the drywall went back up. (This ambiguity would probably have been caught if we had gone through inspection as we were supposed to, but sadly, I didn't realize that either.)

It didn't help that in separate conversations with our kitchen designer at around the same time, she assured us that we would be getting "hockey puck" undercabinet lights. She did this to reassure my husband, who hates fluorescent lights, that we would not be getting those. (He has strong negative associations with the flicker and the hum, from his days of working in cubicles as a programmer.)

At that stage, we also discussed how we would relocate the 4-inch recessed can lights overhead. We didn't do this with any formal "lighting plan" as we did for the layout of cabinets... instead, the contractor just walked me through his plan, pointing to different spots in the ceiling with his tape measure, and after making a few adjustments, I gave my approval. We used eight cams because we had eight available.

Fast forward, through drywall installation, floor installation, cabinet installation, sink and countertop installation, tile installation.... till the day comes for the electrician sub to come back and connect the undercabinet lighting fixtures and turn all the circuits back on. He installed seven fluorescent light bars, all in about an hour and a half that morning. When I saw them, at lunchtime, I thought "UH, OH."

To make matters worse, our kitchen designer had forgotten to order light rail.

We tried out the fluorescents that night, and they were (a) blinding, (b) turning our gorgeous grey/green limestone backsplash into puke grey, and (c) creating interference every time we turned on a radio in the kitchen.

Did I mention that my husband's the primary cook in our family, and he *always* listens to the radio while cooking? In fact, he had already bought a new undercabinet radio, removed it from the box, thrown the box away, and lost the receipt?

Suddenly, we were doing a crunch weekend research project on undercabinet lighting, to figure out what we wanted the electrician to do at this point.

We found Kichler design pro LED direct wire 120 volt fixtures, 12" long, with two 6.4 watt bulbs in the bar, for a cool $129 each, online. Seven fixtures would be an extra thousand bucks. Sadly, this was not an option in our budget at the time.

The benefits of LED lights are low wattage, low heat generation, and extremely long-lasting bulbs. Manufacturers claim that they are rapidly improving in light quality (i.e., they can make them so they don't look like those blue/white Christmas tree lights we've all seen at the discount store.) Aside from the cost, the only disadvantage from our perspective is that they would not be dimmable.

Halogen was out because we hadn't specified it at the beginning, and it requires low-voltage wiring and a transformer (that must be hidden somewhere, typically in a cabinet). LED was out because of cost. Fluorescent was out because of poor light quality, and electrical interference.

The option we ended up going with: Xenon. Bar lights from Utilitech, 3 lights in 17.5 inches, direct wire, about $35 each at our favorite big box store. They have high/low/off switches, though they are not dimmable. They also have a tilt feature, so the light can be focused directly down onto the counter, or out toward the edge. They do not cause electrical interference with the radio.

They are now our primary task lighting. The drawbacks are that they get hot while in use (like halogen puck lights) and they are not energy efficient.

Our new ceiling, and the sink wall with all lights blazing:

{{gwi:1926553}}
{{gwi:1912427}}

The last piece of the puzzle for me was finding a way to make some part of the kitchen lighting scheme energy efficient. Back to our favorite big box we went, where we purchased several different kinds of bulbs meant to go into the recessed cans. We found compact fluorescent bulbs that are dimmable. They take a moment to come on after we flip the switch, and they take a few minutes to come up to full brightness.

If you look at the two photos above, you can see that the CFLs do affect how the cabinets look at night. In the first photo, in natural light, the cherry is more red, and in the second photo, with CFLs overhead, the cherry is more yellow.

The good thing is that they do not generate extra heat, and they are energy efficient.

And the long term plan: as those CFLs burn out, we will replace them with Feit Electric PAR30 dimmable LED screw-in bulbs, available for $63 each at environmentallights.com -- maybe the price will even come down by the time our first CFL needs replacing!

I hope others who have lessons to share about kitchen lighting will add them in as comments below.

Here is a link that might be useful: All our other kitchen details are on this thread