Lighting in Kitchen - where to put cans help!

12 years ago

We are currently building our house and can have up to 8 can lights in our kitchen. I plan on having 3 pendant lights over the island and drew in (with the black circles) where the lighting store recommended placing the other can lights. They recommended placing them where they shine down onto the countertops. Is this the norm, any recommendations/suggestions? Also, I drew in where we plan to extend the peninsula of the sink cabinet.

Thanks!!!

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Comments (6)

maybeiloveyou
12 years ago
I read somewhere that they should lined up with the edge of the countertop. Anyway, I'm curious about this too so hopefully someone has some answers!
puppeez
12 years ago
Mine are 3' out fr the wall, based on my kitchen layout it worked out well. That allowed them to be in a straight line. I have them on either side of the cooktop, either side of the sink, above the sink, in front of the dbl ovens and centered on the frig and doorway. I have undercab lighting and I don't experience shadows.
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Can you draw a sketch of the general building area--the road, driveway, garage, outbuildings, and how you would orient your present house plan? I spent a little time this afternoon looking at your plans and trying to think of how to improve them, but I keep getting stopped at the thought of all of that hot sun in the summer. The screened porch just seems to be on the wrong side to be useful. We had a deck on our previous unshaded south side, and from about 10 a.m. to dusk it was too hot to be out there in the summer due to the heat radiating off the floor boards. We now have a patio facing NW, but we took down 4 trees to open up the back yard some more and the SW sun on the pavers makes it impossible to use the patio from about noon to 4 p.m. Now that the lower branches on the adjacent trees have space to grow, we will have shade on the patio again in the not too distant future. I think that you will use the front porch the most. Ours faces SE so it is cool at all times of the day. Also, the prevailing summer breeze is usually from the SW, so it blows across the porch. Have you had a screened porch before? We thought about whether to include one, but decided that the summer would be too short and too hot to get much use out of it, and the spring and fall would be too cool most of the time, and therefore we put our money into other parts of the house instead. Seems like a year round sunroom would be more useful. But maybe since you're home all day, things would be different for you. I know you specifically haven't asked for comments on the other half of the house, but I hope that you won't mind if I make a few. When I think of a farm, I think of dirty work boots coming in. Is the office for your husband to use to keep track of the farm, or is that elsewhere? Will he be coming in with his dirty clothes directly to the laundry, or will he be using the powder room? If any of these are true, I would not want the dirt in the hall to the MBR or main living area. I'd want the laundry, powder room and office with doors opening into the mudroom. When we were building our house (we were owner-builders), we were a mess at the end of each day. We were renting a house that had a huge mudroom/laundry with a bathroom with shower right next to it. It opened off the garage and the driveway and we were able to keep the mess there and not transfer the dirt, sawdust, etc. into the rest of the house. For layout purposes and traffic flow, I think I prefer the first plan. Since you're home with 2 children, you must be in the kitchen a lot. Do you can things in the summer/fall? Do you store a lot of things from shopping or gardening? Do you have other family members visit a lot? Could you put some measurements on the screened porch, kitchen, and dining area in the first plan? There should be enough space to improve the kitchen here. Anne
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Yes, it will be "fine" ....but it could be better, because most of the light will be illuminating floor space instead of the the front of the counters/stove (where most of your work takes place, so you generally want that as well lit as possible) or the cabinet interiors. Undercabinet lights will have to overcome the shadow that will be cast by having the ceiling lights behind you, so you have less illumination than you might - and still, only if you make sure that they are installed at the front of the cabinets, not back next to the wall as most contractors will do. That is what the lighting design pro that I paid for emphasized to me. It will be very easy for your installer follow that plan, but just position the lights over the edge or just off the edge of the counters. He will just have to use a few inches more wire for each light.
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alwaysfixin
12 years ago
Your photo was too small on my screen to see, so I'll just give you general advice:

- You want your cans placed somewhere around the edge of the counter to 3" from the edge. That is so that you don't have the lighting behind you while you work at the counter (which would cast a shadow where you'd want the most light). Furthermore, rule of thumb is that the lights are about 4'-5' apart from each other, unless you are using the 4" cans which must be closer to each other (not sure about the 4" cans distance).

- don't have lights so close to upper cabinets that you won't be able to open an upper cabinet door without scraping the recessed can trim.

- where there is no countertop, like at the fridge or at a pull-out cabinet, you may want to put the can a little farther away from the wall than you would over the countertop so that the light sheds on the pull-out (when it's pulled out) or into the fridge. Don't worry whether the cans will all be in a line or not - no one will notice, and you want to avoid the "airplane runway" look anyway.

- you don't have to worry about lighting a range or cooktop, assuming you'll have a hood or OTR MW with lights in it.

- there is no point in spending money on cans that will just be lighting the floor.

- you should have a light dedicated to the sink. I have seen some people put two small 4" cans over the sink so that there is no shadow anywhere while standing at the sink. We opted for one 5" can, and have been happy with it.

- one exercise is to go to Home Depot, get a couple of extension cords and a couple of plug-in light sockets that can be used with flood bulbs. Stand on a ladder and hold them up, or have someone hold them up, where you think you want the lights, and see how it looks and where the light is shed. DH and I did this, and it was the best tool ever to show us where to place our cans.
numbersjunkie
12 years ago
My new kitchen has cans over the aisles. My old kitchen had them over the counters. I have no problem with "lighting up the floor" since I consider the cans as general lighting, not task lighting and I have good under cabinet lights for task lighting. Otherwise, I would have had to use twice the number of cans and it would have been too much in my smallish kitchen.
my2sons
12 years ago
Will you have a light inside your pantry? If not, you will need one. We had a similar corner pantry in our last house that did not have a light in it and it really needed it. The can just outside our pantry door was not sufficient. The placement of your other cans looks okay. Will you have undercabinet lighting also?
Eyegirlie
Original Author
12 years ago
Thank you for the replies!

Yes, the pantry has its own lights and there will also be undercabinet lights.

Thanks again!

Lighting in Kitchen - where to put cans help!

Comments (6)

maybeiloveyou

puppeez

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Lighting in Kitchen - where to put cans help!

Comments (6)

maybeiloveyou

puppeez

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alwaysfixin

numbersjunkie

my2sons

EyegirlieOriginal Author

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Eyegirlie
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