The first thing that I would do is ask your architect if he uses any particular lighting showroom when doing projects. Many showrooms do not charge for designing the lighting as long as you purchase it from them. Living in New York, you have the best of everything and should be able to find exactly what you want. Also, if you want some idea of what is out there today, visit some websites and look at what is being offered. If you want to do recessed lighting you can look at Nora, WAC Lighting, Lightolier and Juno. Nora and WAC are less expensive. If you want to do track lighting along the sides of the beams you can look at the same sites. There is so much out there that it needs to be narrowed down as to exactly what you want. Hunting around may be the best bet you have at this point. The manufacturers above also do pendant lighting. I know that track lighting is distasteful to many people. However, it is also inexpensive to start with. What you would do is make certain that you have all the necessary track and track parts to start. Heads with track lighting can be added as you go along. They don't have to be purchased all at once. Many times we have done this for people who are on a tight budget. The other point that I would like to make is that you look at your kitchen at night. Forget about the daytime. Most people tell those of us in lighting about all the sun the room gets. However, that only gets you light during the day. Narrow down what you think you would like to do and take it from there.

Thanks everyone for your input. solarpowered, that's the existing subpanel in the closet. I'm hopeful (but also doubtful) that maybe they will let me keep it there. I've had conflicting advice - some say that because I'm not adding any circuits, I will be able to keep it. Others say that just touching the panel will constitute a change and will require moving it. I think if we have to move it, we might move it to the outside of the same closet (facing the kitchen entryway). patty-cakes, thanks for the tip on the pendant lights. I think we will stick with 2. (Which is also probably for the best, as 3 would've given us problems with Title 24 too). I am concerned about the ceiling looking like a landing strip and am trying to weigh that with all of my other concerns. I'm finding this really difficult to find the perfect solution. modernhouse, the indirect pendant is an interesting idea. Do you have any pictures of your kitchen and light fixture? I also posted this question on the lighting forum and someone there suggested using a ceiling fixture instead of recessed lights too. In some ways I really like this idea - that the indirect light off the ceiling would be softer than downlighting. I'm worried though that it would not give me enough fluorescent wattage to offset the halogen pendants. Also, because our cabinets will be so dark, I was hoping to cast some pools of light down the cabinet fronts. lightguy and dim4fun, thanks for the discussion about LEDs. I'm interested to see what these lights look like. We have LED lights in the garden, but they have a bluish-tinge. It sounds like these recessed LEDs have a warmer color, similar to incandescent. Dimmable is great too. How do they compare price-wise to fluorescent cans? I will have fluorescent undercabinet lighting, so that would be my main task lighting. The cans would be more for ambient lighting and to light cabinet fronts. If I have 2 x 50W halogen pendants, 68W of undercabinet fluorescents, then if I went with LED cans I should be able to make Title 24. Anyway, I'll look into it some more. Meanwhile, I have come up with a lighting plan attempt using fluorescent and halogen. In the diagram below, green is Fl undercabinet lighting, yellow are halogen pendants, red are recessed fluorescents (26W lamps in 42W cans) and blue are dimmable recessed incandescents. I know, it looks like a lot of light. It may well be too much light and too many holes. Here's my thinking behind it - I figure that the blue incandescents would be on a dimmer and would be dimmed most if not all of the time. If we're in the kitchen cooking, we would have the red fluorescents on. The kitchen is visible from the living and dining areas, so when we're not in the kitchen, we could just have the pendants and the blue incandescent lights on low for ambience. In both instances, we would have the U/C lights on. Is this a stupid idea? Would it look odd to have 2 kinds of recessed lights? I'm totally out of my element here, but trying to educate myself. Any suggestions welcome. I'm also open to the idea of a ceiling fixture, if I can also find a way to put some light on the upper cabinets and have some dimmable light for ambience (maybe I could use the LEDs for this ...)

Thanks davidtay; that is what I was thinking, I was just concerned that might be a little jammed to add one there. The ones at the island need to stay as they are to be the island task lighting. And I like the idea of having some by the front edge of the primary work spaces on the perimeter counters, even though I have the undercab lights going in too. Good point about the ceiling joists, we'll have to look at that.

Hi davidtay: I have read the post you linked so many times, but when the discussion gets to the bulb types, my eyes start crossing. And then I get worried about purchasing a lifetime bulb now only to replace it in a few years when technology changes. I was hoping to use incandescent now and upgrade to LED when the technology improves. I've inserted an updated lighting plan and would love your input on that. Will this plan give me enough light if I use incandescent? Keep in mind that my cabinets are cherry and my counter tops are soapstone. I considered installing LED in the kitchen and incandescent everywhere else but I think the color differential between the two type of lighting will be a problem. 1. If I go with 4-inch housings in the kitchen and end up with regular incandescent will the lighting be too dim? 2. I am installing several eyeball trims throughout the house and the local lighting store tells me they do not have an LED bulb for the eyeball trim. So I would have to use incandescent for those fixtures. Is there a manufacturer out there who makes both LED and incandescent that are the same color? I'm not sure if you read my kitchen forum post, but in our area, most professionals are advising to wait for the LED technology to improve. (I inserted a link to my kitchen thread.) We make our own electricity with Photovoltaic so our electric bills are pretty minimal. Any advice is appreciated. thank you so much. . Here is a link that might be useful: x post kitchens forum