Ours is centered in the room, which means it is not centered over the island. It's not really obvious - I'm the only one that notices it but it's one of those little things that bugs me.

No central light fixtures! They are the worst possible light for a kitchen. If you want "general" overhead lighting, then use the cans for that. If you must have a "main" lighting fixture, it should be a pendant over the island. You also need under cabinet lighting. Layers of light, especially on the work surfaces, is what makes a shadowy glare ridden room into a cozy well lit workroom.

I would consider using a track for the time being mounted off the central fixture box. That way you can aim light in various directions to avoid the glare and shadows associated with a single source in the center. I did this as a budget upgrade for a client's house that was going on the market and it was pretty effective, and inexpensive.

My kitchen is a bit smaller than yours, but similar. I decided to provide the general lighting that you envision from your "central" light fixture from two identical fixtures, positioned roughly 1/3 and 2/3 along the room. My reasoning is that, with two, the placement is less critical and obvious as compared to one. Oh, and I also followed GreenDesigns advice to have many sources of light to make a layered lighting approach (pendants+undercabinet).

What if you abhor can lighting? What if can lighting looks like an airport runway to your eyes? What are the alternatives? What about two lights in the center (equidistant 1/3 and 2/3 like Angie's) and one over the sink (650 watts total)?

What are the alternatives to can lights?

My central light fixture, which I totally love, is centered over the island, but it's also pretty well in the center of the room. If it's a down light, I'd say over the island. If it's general and diffuse, I don't think it matters that much. That assumes that you have other lighting as well.

My central fixture is built-in painted wood and has a big round down light which lights the island, with recessed up lights surrounding it and bouncing off the ceiling for indirect lighting of the whole room. That's supported by recessed lights in the corners, and under cabinet lights on the perimeter, plus lights in the hood (4), and two recessed in the bridge over the sink. Light is good. :)

I had a lighting designer, Brian Brzycki at Walters Wholesale Electric. It was worth the price!

Well, MissyV just turned me on to Greta's kitchen. She has 2 small chandeliers over the island, off-center in the kitchen, with some can lights. I think it looks rather great.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Steph, that's a beautiful kitchen, thanks for the link.
GreenDesigns - I do intend to ultimately have 'layers of light' but at this point just want to get rid of the stupid fan/light combo.

I'm pretty sure that bee's kitchen (which everyone under the sun loves, myself included) has a chandy over the island....

ae2ga: I share your abhorrence. I think you named the alternatives, but don't forget undercabinet. Oh, I suppose, depending on your tastes and the kitchen style, track lighting is another alternative to cans (as Pal points out).

If all you are putting in at the moment is one light fixture, then it should be a pendant over the island. Something that give you both uplighting and downlighting. But, as many have pointed out, a center ceiling flush mounted light fixture is the worst type of lighting for any room. It's an especially bad choice for a kitchen, though. When you are working with sharp things, or hot things, or heavy things, you want enough light to be able to see safely. Central light fixtures create shadowns and are grossly inefficient at lighting any of your work surfaces where you need the most light.

Under cabinet lighting is pretty simple and inexpensive to install. I'd rush to do that as the second step after lighting the island, because that will at least light your work surfaces and take away some of the safety issue.

Okay, this is helpful. But could someone tell me how a center single light fixture (in this case a 5 light chandelier) differs in terms of shadows etc, from two or even three pendants hung over an island? They would all be hung at more or less the same height...
So is it just the absence of can lights that is problematic? Most finished kitchens I see have either pendants or a main light fixture in addition to recessed lights (and undercab lights).
I was definitely thinking of doing at least three recessed, and undercab as well. Just waiting for my money tree to grow ;)

A lot of it depends on the actual fixtures, but, in general, a single fixture with a cone of light focus downward, like a pendant or recessed can, will create a circular pool of light with a hot spot in the middle and shadows on the edges. If you have two or more with overlapping cones of light, the dark areas are filled and the less light edges of the cone have double the light.

The single light also creates shadows everywhere something blocks it, like your hands, and the bowl you're stirring or the lemon you're cutting. With multiple overlapping lights, you have one light source casting a shadow from one direction, and another light source lighting up the space where the shadow is, making the shadow go away.

Beware "drama" lighting. That's what you get when you space the lights too far apart for the cones to overlap. The guy who built my house adored it. The only place he didn't do it was over the bed (I assume the better to read by). All this light and shadow looks great in a retail space, but at home it's just underlit and annoying. For a kitchen, rather than having pools and shadows, it's better to create drama, if you want it, with accent lighting. A lot of people just turn on the undercabinet lights, for example. Plus you can do LEDs in the toekicks for a nice little glow that acts as a nightlight, too, and if your cabinets don't go to the ceiling, you can put indirect lighting up there to bounce off the ceiling and fill the whole room. You can also put recessed task lighting focused on the counters, and chaneliers with lots of lusters but few bulbs, which cast a lot of interesting pools and shadows, just for the drama, with the real lighting being elsewhere. If you put in different lighting options like that, you can get your drama but turning on only one or two, and turn them all on when you want a light filled room with no shadows.

Wow, plllog - that was a great explanation- thanks so much!

So I'm hoping that since my single light fixture has 5 lights (and is fairly broad), it won't be quite as shadowy as, say, the single flush or semi flush mount light in the center like you describe plllog. I think I'm going to have DH put it up as is, without moving things, and then see what the shadow situation is. If it's horrible, I can always return it and get a couple pendants instead.
Thanks for all the input!

Thanks Angie et al. No upper cabs at all, but maybe lights under the shelf? The plan calls for two ceiling lights (Rejuvenation Chapman), one light over the sink (Rejuvenation Astoria), and a 6-7' window. Lighting still baffles me, and the one thing I do know is I don't want can lights, after that, I'm learning, learning, learning...

I do not like canned lighting either! I hate the look in retail spaces and now thanks to Plllog, I understand why. That said, my kitchen is small, 7x12', and I have a semi flush mount ceiling fixture that I love. The fixture was selected to provide ambient lighting only, not for task. I selected it to bounce light off of my ceiling, for soft light. I also have under cabinet, and over the sink, LED lighting that I love. There has always had an over head fixture that was pulled with a chain. In my new kitchen I still wanted a ceiling light. I have no issue with my ceiling mount at all. I use the undercounter LED for all work, and the overhead supplements this. I have everything on a dimmer. I did not want cans because as I said before I don't like them, they hurt my eyes or something.

So now to the OP question: I centered my light to the features in the room that called for centering. Initially though, I centered it in the room with the cabinets taken into consideration, equidistant from each side, finding the center of the ceiling. Then one day early on, before any thing was installed, it occurred to me that I needed to center the light with the window going one direction, and the wall niche going the other direction. I now have a hole that needs repaired but I am so glad I had the electrician move my light. I love my fixture. I think it is charming, and cans would detract from the look. My kitchen is in an old farm house. My kitchen does not have a modern look at all. I remodeled with old style in mind. Here is a picture of my fixture:

maybe this is a better picture to show the centering:

In my 11X15 kitchen I do have a central light fixture (Rejuvenation Baldwin) that hangs down into the room. The schoolhouse shade provides excellent light throughout the smallish room. I did have a 300 watt light bulb in it and found that was too much light! So I now have a 150 watt equivalent CFL.
The light while being centered in the room, is toward the edge of my island. I don't find any problems with shadows at all and don't really notice that it doesn't center over the island- it looks appropriate for the old house that it is, and that was the look I wanted to keep. For the new kitchen I added under cab lights as well as the new hood has a light on it, and a new Rejuvenation pendant over the sink, so the task areas are full of light.

I don't particularly like the look of cans and don't believe they look appropriate for old houses, so obviously didn't want those. I find the lighting that I have is perfect for the size of my room and the different tasks (cooking, prepping, canning) I need to accomplish there. I am finding that having the hood lights (which I haven't had in nearly 10 years!), gives me such nice light that I enjoy keeping the overhead off and work in a 'quiet' space. The UCL's are not yet hooked up, so I can't wait to see what that does.
Btw, I love chandys in kitchens!

@enduring - your fixture is really charming, as you said, and I think (correct me if I'm wrong) now you have that fabulous herringbone BS?

@oldhousegal - I do love the schoolhouse look...I'm thinking about that over the sink. I'm thinking I've seen your kitchen, I'm going to search again though.
So in all I'll have the ceiling chandy on a dimmer, UCL (LED I"m thinking), and a schoolhouse pendant over the sink. Seems like enough, I hope. Anything is a step up from one single light source in the form of my gross ceiling fan!

Thanks for the input (and the pics).

We did a can-free kitchen, FWIW (also an old house) and are extremely happy with how the lighting turned out (which is a big deal because I struggled and struggled with it!)

Our old kitchen was 11'x13' and was lit with a single large flush-mount central fluorescent fixture (round, new kind of fluorescent which I hear is better than the old school kind---PO put it in to sell so no clue on that, but we seem to be the outliers in that the one central fixture worked extremely well for our particular space). We opened up a wall to make it 18'x13' and replaced the single fixture with three semi-flush central schoolhouse fixtures, each with a 150W equivalent bulb and large shade, which has turned out to be more than sufficient (probably could have done just two). They're centered over the room like foci on an ellipse. Most of the time, we only use these lights (all on the same switch) and it lights the room and work spaces beautifully, with very few shadows.

We also have two pendants, one on either side of the sink---could have done just a single pendant over the sink, as this is also a little overkill, but it looks nice aesthetically since each is centered on a window. :) These primarily get used when I'm doing prep or cleanup work and don't need all of the lights on---then I just turn the pendants on, which is nice. They don't add much of note when the overheads are on, but are on dimmers so can be subtle lighting if we are in another room but want some minimal kitchen lighting. We have no UCL and have not regretted that---no problems with shadows (though our cabinetmaker insisted on leaving space to retrofit for them!) However, we only have two counter runs with cabinets/shelves overhead, and we did go an inch or two higher on these to help on that front (19" and 19.5" respectively vs. the standard 18"). Finally, our hood has two lights on it, and we chose one with lights in the front vs. the back so that they would be as useful as possible. I don't use these often, but it is sometimes useful when I'm doing very involved stove projects. Most often, these get used when there is something simmering on the stove that I need to pop in and check periodically, but I'm not doing anything else in the kitchen---I turn the overheads off and leave the stove lights on so that I can come and go to see how it's coming.

The only light that we never, ever use is the pendant over our breakfast nook---it has been turned on maybe six times in the year since it was installed, and never for actual eating! (Usually as a low light if someone is coming home late, since it's on a dimmer.) The overhead lights illuminate that area such that we don't need the extra light if they're on, and since it's mostly used for breakfast/lunch, there's a lot of natural light during the day. So that was probably a silly purchase, but oh well...

Our lights are a mix of Rejuvenation and Schoolhouse Electric, and I highly recommend both companies if you're looking at period lights. (I slightly prefer Schoolhouse on the quality front, but Rejuvenation is more flexible on some of its customization features, which can be important if you want a specific number of sockets or such.) We have lots of fixtures spanning a wide range of price points in our house, and I do think splurging on these was money well spent (we needed ours retrofitted for California's lighting standards, so didn't have too many options on sources, but would do it again even without that constraint). I found lighting a huge challenge to visualize and asked 10 million questions about it at the time, but in the end it all came together and has worked out really well, so have faith! :)

Artemis - will you please post pics or a link to pics? I'd really like to see you lighting, well, and the rest of the kitchen too.

Hi Jalsy6, yes I have the herringbone backsplash. I am almost done with my kitchen! Good luck on your lighting.

My fixture only has a 100 watt bulb. I loved the fixture so much I went with it knowing that it was at the limit of minimal wattage. There was another fixture that was a close 2nd and had 3 bulbs, but I went with this pretty fixture instead. The 100watt fixture has not been a problem because, like you, in the past I had 120 watts and nothing else in the room. Now I have under cabinet LED lights that at times stand on their own. I have one LED strip over my sink too instead of a pendent - My space is so small I tried to simplify as much as posible. I really like the layering of lights.

Yes, definitely---our photos are long overdue (mostly because we have been almost-but-not-completely finished for sooooo long!) But my husband is finally re-hanging our swinging door this weekend and our cabinetmaker is making one final visit to bring back a cabinet door next week, so we should at long last be ready for some reveal photos then!

In the meantime there are some pics of the central fixtures themselves in this thread from mid-reno: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg0212395016871.html

They're not turned on in that photo, but I will snap some with the finished kitchen and lights on so you can see the difference---does give a sense of how they are centered over the room, though, and what the natural light is like. The wall that we took down ran in between the fridge and the open cabinet on the right, so it blocked the door and the two windows in the eating area---taking it down changed the room's natural lighting dramatically, though of course this doesn't affect the nighttime lighting so much. (Also, as an update on this long-ago thread, we did keep those shades and now don't think of them as too big at all---they seem perfect! I think the smaller size would have seemed equally at home in the space, but no regrets on sticking with the big ones.)

You can also see the pendant over the eating area, though it's missing its shade (a smaller schoolhouse shade)---the other two pendants are smaller cloth cord fixtures that are just to the right of the photo (you can see the edge of the window) over a 9' x 9' L-shaped run with the sink and stove centered on each leg.

Lighting professionals have formulas regarding the overlap of light patterns and how close lights need to be in relation to ceiling ht and kitchen tasks. We took our plan to a local lighting store and got a free analysis. They said our plan was not overkill, which surprised me.

OUr G-shaped kitchen is 16 x 12. We have a pair of matching 3-bulb circular ceiling fixtures in the 1/3 and 2/3 positions for general lighting. I don't use them for everyday use when it's just me in kitchen, but they're always on when there are 2+ people in the room. As noted, this eliminates the lone-fixture shadow syndrome and it allows people the best range of movement without messing with more lights.

We also have 3 pendants over sink wall and 2 pendants over peninsula, plus undercab lights and a light in the hood. There are a couple more 2-bulb matching circular ceiling lights in the hallway nearby. I like being able to choose which lights I want. Dimmable feature helps cut down on glare.

Our general-purpose ceiling lights can be switched off from dining room, which eliminates steps, but naturally, sometimes the light which has been left on is a light that only has a single switch, sigh.

I do wish I had a ceiling fan. Spring and fall are times when we don't have the whole-house fans going and there are times when I really need to move more air. I keep windows open as much as possible but even so...

Thanks Artemis - that is the look I am planning but with two lights in the ceiling and one over the sink. I'm looking forward to your final reveal pics.

BTW, if you're considering the vintage-style lights, I just got an email that Rejuvenation is having a 25% off sale on their period basics collection (which has lights very similar to these, though these are actually Schoolhouse Electric) through early November, too. We did our sink pendants and our cabinet hardware through them and liked them very much.

There is a big difference in how a flush mount light creates shadows over the room vs. a semi-flush mount vs. a pendant. Flush mount fixtures are the harshest because they do not offer anything but light in a downward direction, even if they have a diffuser. A flush mount single source of light in a kitchen is the worst choice.

Semi flush mount light's like Enduring's one, can offer direct room lighting downward, but they also offer light that is bounced off of the ceiling and is more indirect, thus less shadows. Photographers often use light bounced off of surfaces to light their compositions because the light tends to bounce in many different directions, and thus softens the glare of the shadows created from the single source.

Pendant lighting, can be up lighting or down lighting for task lighting, but can also provide general room lighting up, sideways, and down. If you are going to use a "central" light fixture for your general lighting, then a pendant, even if it only hangs a foot down, will be your best lighting choice. You want one that offers lighting in many directions, like a many armed chandelier. Pendants that have some type of diffuser like chandelier shades or frosted glass globes offer a softer and less glaring light for less shadows.

None of these is a substitute for your lighting, which you also need. Task lighting could include pendants above a sink or island, under cabinet lighting, or track lighting focused on your work surface.

I don't like recessed cans either and Enduring, I adore your fixture! I also love Greta's chandeliers.
I would do the same if I didn't think my 8' ceilings are too low for a semi-flush and I didn't have part of a skylight shaft taking up the center of the ceiling.

Uplight is definitely of the essence, no matter what, for aesthetics and for aging or sensitive eyes.
I'd say where you put your chandelier will depend on the height, how wide an area it will light up and if it's just for ambient light or also for task lighting over your island - and how much light you think you need there. (I wonder if you can - safely! - temporarily hook a plug and an extension cord onto it and hold it up in the various positions?)

I'm also working on (agonizing over)my plan right now - great advice from everybody! Trying to avoid shadows and glare.

I'm thinking dimmable LED lighting under cabinets, something above the cabinets to wash the ceiling and some kind of down light over the sink and possibly over the end of the peninsula-to-be (eventually - right now it's a counter with a cutout).

For me the burning questions are: LED or T4 fluorescent to wash the ceiling? Does it have to be dimmable? Fluorescent is cheaper, but not dimmable. Will I miss the overall diffused brightness of fluorescent (and the new color rendition is better) or is it worth paying extra for the gentleness of the LED and use the downlighting to fill in where it doesn't quite reach? I still don't want to do six cans, plus LED above and below...

Another no can light kitchen here....
We have a large pendant over each prep area of our 9 foot island. Since the stove is in the middle, we also have the light from the hood to use if needed. We have a matching large pendant over our sink on the opposite wall. Since our ceilings are high in areas, it helps to hang the pendants to be at the right heights. We have no upper cabs, so no need for under cab lighting, lol....
We put a billiard table light over our 7 foot peninsula which may have been overkill, but it lights the living room on the other side as well, which does not have an overhead fixture. It has both down lights and up lights (2 up and 2 down). It is quite bright, so we will probably do lesser bulbs next time.

Just thought I'd post a photo since DH put up the fixture in the same place as the fan was. I'm happy with it, although I do think that centered over the island is going to be the best spot for it. We can't really have cans anyway because of how old our house is/what's above the kitchen. So we'll add a pendant over the sink and LED UCL. Need to adjust the shades, and one of the bulbs is different from the rest...Here are a couple photos...excuse the mess!

Except for the hood I just put in and the island I don't have, it looks a lot like my kitchen! (No small humans, though.)

I agree that the chandelier would look best over the island (I suppose you could even go "retro" and "swag" it if you didn't want to patch the ceiling.) It would make the light onto the ceiling not centered, but if that bothers you, you could get an outlet above the cabinets and add a strip light of your choice up there to bounce some light onto the ceiling on that side.

Btw, this may sound weird, but I hung a small mirror behind the stove so I can see behind me into the room and the hallway when I'm cooking - I love it. (It even reflects the livingroom tv.)

projectcat, funny you mention the 'swag' as we did talk about that. I'd obviously prefer to actually move the whole thing, but that's so messy and complicated when a simple hook could do the trick!

Ultimately we're going to have a built up crown, if not a cabinet-looking soffit to hide a hood vent. So I'm hesitant to commit to lighting above, although that does look lovely...I'm really just hoping that with a pendant and UCL my various areas will be well lit enough.

Seems like we're on the same page improving things without getting into the full remodel at this time :)
I assume there is no existing ducting for a hood? That's how it was here, so it was a big deal figuring out how I wanted it for efficiency and looks (and without spending the whole budget).
Sounds like you're set with the lighting for now.

Enduring, I loved your fixture so much that I bought one similar but in a stainless steel chrome. I have a an electrician coming by tomorrow after my class and another one on Tues and another one on Wed. and then I will make up my mind.