Hi, I am doing a fairly substantial renovation of my first home (new kitchen, flooring, scraping popcorn ceilings and adding pot lights) and I could use some help with the lighting. The house is a one level rancher with 8' ceilings and easy access from above and below via attic and crawl space.

For the pot lights my contractor and electrician have recommended some inexpensive flush mount LEDs such as the Liteline 4" Round LED Slim Profile Recessed Downlight. My understanding is that this type of light is inexpensive, easy to install, and easy to place since it has a 120° beam angle. But I have heard that this type of light tends to have a lot of glare, and not enough light where you really need it. (countertops)

An interior designer friend and a lighting specialist we talked to both recommended going with true recessed lighting instead, since it reduces glare and increases the amount and quality of light where it's needed. But this type of lighting seems quite a lot more expensive, and the placement needs to be considered much more carefully.

I have been trying to research this stuff online and have learned a lot (COB vs SMD downlights, beam angles, foot candles, glare rating), but still don't know what to do.

I made a mockup of my floor plan (embedded at the end, below) showing my current thinking on where to place the lights and what types of lights to use to balance cost and quality of light. All the lights would be on dimmers, 3000K, hopefully 90+ CRI. There will be undercabinet lighting as well.

I would be very interested to hear any feedback people have on this plan. Almost all of these lights have already been roughed in and the drywallers are almost done so I would prefer to leave things where they are, but I am still wondering what's the best type of light and what beam angles to use where. The recessed lighting above the kitchen cabinets has not been roughed in yet.

Our kitchen will be white shaker cabinets painted in OC-118 Snowfall with a slightly warmer white countertop (caesarstone organic white or similar). The ceiling will be Snowfall as well. The walls will be OC-55 Paper White. The flooring will be engineered hardwood, white oak. (fairly light)

Here is our plan for the kitchen cabinets (ordered weeks ago, to be installed next week):

We plan to add a 4-seat hightop table (54x27") attached to the left side of the island, not included in the design drawings above. Along the length of the island and the hightop table we plan to have 7 simple pendant lights at varying heights:

My big unresolved question is: what type of recessed lighting should we use in the kitchen, and where should we put it?

I made a mockup showing the beam angle coverage at counter height, based on lights with a 60° beam angle, with 3 of them counter depth from the wall (25") and one at 36" (near the fridge)

Is that a good plan? Or should we go with more lights along the cabinets, with a tighter beam angle (say 7 x 36°)? For the kitchen lighting we were considering the Lumeina 64707 (36°) or 64708 (60°); here are their specs.

Here is my current plan for the lighting for the whole house, feedback very welcome!

Bigger version