I used LED undercabinet strip lighting with an AC adapter plugged into a switched outlet. I fished the AC adapter cable through a small hole in the drywall near the outlet to another small hole at the bottom of the cabinet. The interconnect wires between the different LED strips were stapled along the underside of the cabinets so they wouldn't be seen. It worked out great. If you don't have a switched outlet, you could use a small 12v DC switch mounted under the cabinet near the first LED strip to turn them on or off. The LEDS are somewhat expensive, but low heat/power use and never need replacing. Here is a link that might be useful: LED strip lights

I just about never use our undercabinet lights. I used them all the time in our old kitchen (one single one-bulb light fixture in the center that created shadows) but in the 5+ years we've had them in our new kitchen, I very rarely turn them on. Probably it's because I do the majority of prep at a peninsula with a good fixture over it (no upper cabs.) We have recessed lights placed over most of the counter so that shadows aren't created. I prefer the more dispersed light from the ceiling rather than a lower light specifically lighting up the counter space. We have pendants over our sinks (and along a run of counter with no upper cabs) and in our vent hood. Since we have these lights in our major work areas, the uc lights are unnecessary. Most of the time we use the peninsula light + 3 recessed lights. Sink lights and range light get turned on when we work at them. We have 4 additional recessed lights that rarely get turned on but they are my extra lights of choice when needed. Think about how you'll use your kitchen. If you're going to do a lot of prep work in a space that has upper cabinets, you may want to consider putting a uc there. But there's no reason to go overboard. We put xenon lights under our 6 upper cabinets and when I turned one on about a year ago dh was surprised because he totally forgot we had them. I'm most likely to turn one on during the dusky early morning or early evening. We have easy to reach switches at the entry of our kitchen area so there is no need to leave any lights on in the kitchen when nobody is using it. When building our kitchen I couldn't imagine not having uc lights since I depended on them in the old one. But they turned out to be redundant with other great task lighting. I did find I needed better lighting as I got older. But even my mother in her 80's doesn't seem to need our uc lights (different story in her underlit kitchen.)

Absolutely NO! General lighting should be on a different switch than task lighting and accent lighting. You want the over the sink lighting on one switch, for those late night visits where you only want one light to come on. The under cabinet lighting should be on another switch. That’s especially important for functionality and scene setting. The general kitchen lighting and general dining lighting should be on two separate circuits. And please reconsider your kitchen plans. No tall object should ever interrupt a run of counter space. The refrigerator is in a very bad location and should be moved elsewhere. I would suggest shortening the peninsula and placing it across from there.

There are 3 separate aspects: 1. Color warmth--in Kelvin. I think 3000 is perfect. Not too warm and yellow and not the surgical suite/interrogation chamber look. 2. Color accuracy measured by the CRI (color rendering index). 100 is perfect fidelity to the true color. Lower CRI gives sick green tones. Make sure the CRI >90 so the colors are true. 3. Brightness is measured in lumens. For LED strips, look at the lumens/foot. These range widely by product with a good range being probably 125 to 350 lumens per foot. More lumens is brighter. With a dimmer you can go brighter as you can always turn it down. 4. Not mentioned but desirably is "dim to warm"--those are available in some fixtures/bulbs but at a premium price. In LED strips I have seen "tunable" white so that you can create different moods. Still pricey at this time but would be nice for the option of romantic candlelight glow all the way to bright and white.