I have to agree with your designer friend: I too believe 6" cans are outmoded. I feel even 4" cans look dated, but look a lot better than 6". Our 10' high flat ceilings in the dining and kitchen (30'9" x 19'8") were completely redone (they were tray and vaulted before), and we put 26 3" mini-cans with 3.5W LED bulbs for general lighting, 16 3" mini-cans for task lighting (4 over main sink, 8 over main island, 4 over second island), 10 50W PAR20 incandescent bulbs in our 72" hood being replaced by 5W LED bulbs, and 3 pendants over the dining table which will have CFL bulbs in them. I have replaced eight 6" can lights in my living room with 14 3" mini can lights with 3.5W bright white LED bulbs (350 lumens). While only 10 lumens/sq ft, this seems to offer adequate light for our 25' x 20' living room with 13.5' ceilings, with white ceilings, walls, and white marble (Botticino Fiorito). We have about 60 4" 12V MR16 can lights, and we've replaced the 40W halogen bulbs with 3.5W bright white LED bulbs. We have slightly less general light in these rooms than with the 40W halogen. Your six 4" LED cans will likely be bright enough at 27 lumens/sq ft, but will depend on your wall, floor, and counter colors (darker surfaces absorb light, light surfaces reflect and diffuse light). I have 14.7 lumens/sq ft of general lighting, which feels a bit dim on their own despite white ceilings, white counters (Caesarstone Nougat), and white marble floors (Botticino Fiorito). With the island lights on (13.5 more lumens/sq ft), we have very good, bright light with 28 total lumens/sq ft. With the over-sink lights, range hood lights, pendants, and 41 lineal feet of in-cabinet accent lights on, we will have football field class lighting.

springvillegardens - are you looking at UC lights for ambient lighting or for task lighting? Many contractors seem to think that people want it just for aesthetics, not for function...and thus the suggestion of using rope lights. Rope lights, IMO, are NOT going to give you enough working light - I would strongly suggest going with LED strips. We went with lighting from EnviromentalLights.com - they were extremely helpful...I sent them a drawing of the kitchen and they laid out exactly what I needed and put it in a cart for me. We talked a bit more about some of the things I was looking for and so on and they helped revise my cart then as well. All in all, a very smooth process. Yes, it was more money than rope lighting, but I have wonderfully bright lighting to work with and I opted to have a dimmer also for them and it dims beautifully in the evenings as an ambient light source.

I used the Ecosmart 4 in LED also. Best price I could find last month was $159/4 on HD online. The 6 in ones you can get for $27 in store, but 4 in hasn't seen that drop yet, unless it was very recent. I got my cans from a local lighting store where I bought a few lights. They gave me contractor pricing. I think because I was buying 10 and a bunch of other stuff. I stopped in a few times and they were super helpful. I ended up with a mixed lot of some Quarum and some Quoizel. They were under $15 each. The Quoizel were much easier to work with going in, the guys noticed a definite difference in ease of adjusting and the screw system was easier than the Quorum nail system. Haven't had any of the lights installed yet, but hopefully the end of next week. They just put up the new ceiling drywall today.

Lynn - sorry for the delayed response. The bulbs are line-voltage 50w halogens. I used the low-voltage in my bathroom reno 3 years ago and the fixtures hum. Everyone says they shouldn't, but they do. I have them on Lutron digital LV dimmers, and that may be the issue - I might try a mechanical LV dimmer to see if that resolves the hum in the bathroom, but I've since moved back to using nothing but line-voltage recessed lights. Saves me money on the fixtures and the dimmers. The cabinets are good old BM Cloud White, which was arrived at after weeks of having every shade of white large BM chip taped up to our walls to see how it looked in all lighting conditions. I put one LED puck in each set of upper cabinets centered, but in the full glass cabinets I put 2 fixtures in to ensure thorough lighting carried down through the glass shelves. They're all on dimmers as well. The LED pucks are 'warm', around the 3500K mark I think. I got them through LED Lights Canada in Edmonton for about $20 each which was cheap compared to many sources. I couldn't bear the thought of using hot halogen/xenon lights inside my painted cabinets, and the counter lighting is boxed in - not just screwed to the underside of the cabinets. So heat was a major factor in spending the extra $ to go LED.