lightguy, thank you. I actually went back to read old posts on and around this topic, and in doing so saw that you do go to bat for the MR16s. Something else I thought interesting is the possibility of switching the bulbs for LED lamps down the road, when they become available. I'd be keen to do that. Something else you posted somewhere also caught my eye: you were responding, if I recall, to a poster concerned with buzzing LED lights. You said you had not encountered that, and it suggested that there was something funky going on at the wiring end of things, rather than owing to the luminiere. I think this is what I am worried about in making the decision to use MR16s, against the advice of my contractor (who is not the electrician) who would have me use the line-voltage GU10 lamps because he says the MR16s will buzz and blow out. I'm wondering if the wiring has been done in some kind of way that would make this more likely, hence his push-back. And, of course, if we go against his advice and all this comes to pass, we've no recourse but to do it over ...

Mdod, you may be referring to my post. What wattage are the MR16s in your cabinet? The Philips 10 watt AmbientLED MR16s at Home Depot, which are rated at 435 lumens, are a fine replacement for 50 watt halogens - at least in my application. (Wall washers. I now have six of them, with two lower priority ones to go.) Their color temp is a bit 'whiter' than the halogens and they don't dim as low. Philips actually offers both warmer and cooler color temps under their EnduraLED line. But they need to be purchased from a lighting store. It is interesting to me that the AmbientLED 3000k MR16 is rated at 435 lumens, while the seemingly identical (both have the little built-in fans) EnduraLED 3000k is rated at 485 lumens. Guess they must do some 'binning', and sell the lower bin ones to Home Depot under the AmbientLED name. There are a number of other LED MR16s around. Most draw in the neighborhood of 3-4 watts, but have much lower light output (130-200 lumens). Cost wise, they are all in the $20-35 range. The above 10 watt Philips is $25.

I've never seen your kitchen (or any pictures of it) and thus don't know how your tiles or countertop or paint or cabinets will look like under different lighting, so I have no way to know which would make your colors look best, but my inclination is to go with PAR38 bulbs in 6" cans, because that gives you the most options now and also in the future to change if necessary, or if better/cheaper LED lights come along. I've generally found high color temperatures (4000K and up) look best with white cabinets, which turn yellowish under 2700K light, but that wood cabinets look best with lower color temperatures. But the differences between halogen (about 2850k) and 3000 or 3500K are more subtle. I lean towards the GE 20947 halogen PAR38 bulbs I mentioned earlier, in part because I've used them frequently and can vouch that they give off great light (a 2850K 100CRI halogen won't dull colors like a 2700K 82CRI CFL does), an even well-focused beam spread, and not much glare. And the light bulbs themselves look good, more so than many LED floodlamps currently available which look more like showerheads or jet engines with visible heatsinks. The halogen bulbs have a rated 3000 hour life; by the time they burn out there should be a much larger, higher quality, and cheaper assortment of LED retrofits available then there are now; indeed, a halogen bulb now and an LED replacement two or three years hence could be less expensive than an LED bulb now. I don't notice much heat from them when installed in an 8' ceiling - they're much further away from you than the lights on your rangehood, and considerably bigger but only slightly higher wattage (and wattage correlates with heat). If you're really concerned about adding any heat though, maybe something like the Home Depot Commercial Electric 5"/6" LED modules (or another similar brand) would be better - they're cool, not wildly expensive, efficient, 3000K, but also only low-80s CRI. You can put a PAR30 bulb in a 6" or 6.5" can, but doing so requires a conical trim kit to look good (so there's no big gap around the bulb), and I've never liked that appearance - the fixture looks too big for the bulb - but getting a PAR38-capable nonetheless gives you that flexibility, whereas a 5" can can use only a PAR30. Myself I still prefer to use 5" cans for PAR30 lights for the neater appearance. Long necks or short necks are a choice only for the PAR30 size; other sizes have only one common shape. The long-neck bulb is more common in residential fixtures, and most of what you'll find in consumer-oriented stores. Cheap bulb extenders are sold in hardware stores that will effectively turn a short-neck PAR30 into a long-neck version, and sometimes the socket in the recessed fixture can be adjusted in or out to suit either. The short-neck PAR30 (or smaller bulbs) are a good option when dealing with shallow ceilings though where big cans may not fit. But most times (and nearly all times if there's an attic above your kitchen), there's plenty of space for a normal-depth large can.

Dedicated (integrated) LED lights have some significant advantages. However, one thing to consider -- if you buy one, that's what you're stuck with until you replace it with another entire integrated unit. Right now retrofit screw-in LED bulbs are still evolving rapidly. Their prices have fallen fast and far. It doesn't seem like all that long ago that a 40-Watt-equivalent retrofit bulb at $20 was a bargain. I suspect that retrofit LED bulbs have pretty nearly bottomed out in price, especially with new tariffs on Chinese goods swooping in. When CFs got to a comparable price point some years back, we started seeing specialized features added -- photo and motion sensors, for example. Now that's starting to happen with LED retrofits too. Also, the quality of light they produce continues to improve, though I'd like to see fewer hemispherical lenses and more traditional shapes, and there's less fudging on the actual lumen output and incandescent equivalence. On the downside, advertised design life for retrofit LED bulbs seems to be going down, which I suspect isn't accidental. To finally get to the point here, if you install a conventional incandescent fixture and put a retrofit LED bulb into it, in a few years you can upgrade fairly easily and cheaply with a new retrofit bulb. It'll be more complex and expensive to upgrade a dedicated LED unit, so you might be less likely to do so.