Kitchen Lighting
Kitchen Lighting Guide
When choosing and designing your Kitchen Lighting try to have a flexible approach so that you can reflect the many different uses that this living area will demand. Kitchen Lighting works best when it can adapt throughout its working day, from bright overall light in the daylight hours especially in darker hard to light kitchens, to a children’s homework and activity area in the late afternoon and early evenings through to a low level more intimate light for dinner dinning requirements.
If you have a centre island in your kitchen try and light it from above with ceiling downlights or maybe some swish suspended pendants ensuring that you will be able to see to work and therefore fully utilise your island space. Think about putting this Island lighting on it’s own switch apart from the main perimeter lights to give your design extra flexibility.
To achieve the more intimate levels of light you may wish to use dimmer switches which means you will be able to adjust the overall brightness of your main lighting. You could also add low level LED Plinth lights and subtle under cabinet LED fittings that can be used to great effect. There are also many lighting control systems on the market that can be installed to give you ultimate control, our technical team will be able to give you more information on these types of systems.
Within our Kitchen lighting section of our own showrooms we used LED strip lights placed on top of the wall cupboard pointing upwards so as to illuminate the ceiling from below. we have found that our visitors find this effect very pleasing to the eye as the light is not to bright and cannot be seen from floor level in the kitchen. You can also use this method of uplighting to create different shadow effects above. The further you space the lights apart the darker the areas are in between each fitting whereas if you waned to have a continuos line of light across the whole area you could simple overlap each fitting with another to give the illusion of one constant line of light.
Ceramic wall lights can be used to great effect in a kitchen. They can be large or discrete from both modern to traditional. Many within our range can be painted to match your kitchen units or work tops helping to bring your whole design together. They have the added advantage of being easy to clean and now come in a range of energy saving options to suit every budget. For more information on these versatile fittings please visit our Ceramic Wall Lights page of this website.
We find many customers choose track lighting for their kitchen and is very popular with designers. A power track is installed on to the ceiling or wall of the kitchen and a series of adjustable spot lights is then attached to the track that can be positioned in different ways so as to direct light to various areas of the room. They give a modern or contemporary look to your kitchen and are very a very practical and flexible form of of light especially directed at work surfaces or dining areas as well as highlighting artwork on walls etc. You can visit our full range of Track Lighting from this link
Overall task lighting (Cooking, Cleaning etc.) is very important in any kitchen and should be given extra time and care in selection and design. Make sure that you choose fittings that are bright enough to give you as much shadow free light in work areas as possible. Under cabinet lights are ideal for giving extra light to work surfaces and work well in both fluorescent and LED versions. they can be installed to work from a wall switch, spur unit or simply plugged into a wall socket. Your electrician will be able to offer you advice on the best ways to install any of your chosen kitchen lighting
