Home Remodeling Guide >>  Kitchen Guide >>  10 Easy Steps to Your Dream Kitchen

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Proper Kitchen Lighting

To look its best and function well, a kitchen must be properly lit — and that involves more than just specifying stylish fixtures. A good plan blends lighting into the architectural and decorative details of the room.

Avoid Glaring Errors

When it comes to kitchen lighting, the most common mistake is trying to light the entire room with one ceiling-mounted fixture. The result ends up being what Whitehead calls a "glare bomb," which visually overpowers everything in the space. Recessed lighting, if installed in a generic grid, isn't much better.

"A lot of people do it incorrectly, and they'll end up with too much light in some areas and shadows everywhere else," says Max Isley, a certified kitchen designer and board member of the National Kitchen and Bath Association.

Plan For a Layered Look

No single light source can provide all the necessary light for a kitchen. A well-lit kitchen layers and blends four different types of light. Every kitchen remodel should include the following:

• Task Lighting. It is the workhorse of illumination and provides adequate light for tasks like chopping vegetables and reading recipes. Optimum placement of task lighting comes between a person's head and the work surface, which makes lighting located below the upper cabinets so effective. If a kitchen remodel includes a pantry, make sure to specify task lighting there as well.
• Ambient lighting. It creates a warm glow that fills a room, softens shadows and helps to make people feel instantly welcome in a kitchen. If cabinets do not reach all the way to the ceiling, that space is a great spot for ambient light. Of the four types of lighting, ambient is most often overlooked.
• Accent lighting. It gives depth and dimension to a kitchen. Examples of accent lighting include fixtures placed inside glass-front cabinets to illuminate China, glassware, and other collections as well as recessed, adjustable low-voltage fixtures used to spotlight art.
• Decorative lighting.This type of lighting can be called architectural jewelry. It adds sparkle to a space.

Dim The Lights

As in any room in the house, the ability to adjust light levels in the kitchen is ideal. When cooking or cleaning up, a bright punch of illumination makes the job easier. For lingering over a meal and conversing, dimmed lights create great ambiance. One dimmer in the kitchen won't do the trick, however. Make sure the design calls for separate dimmers for each type of lighting: task, ambient, accent and decorative.