Lighting is critical in every room of your home, especially your kitchen. It's where everything happens! From meal preps, cooking and dining to hosting friends, doing homework and socialising. The kitchen houses many different activities and caters to everyone in your family. Similar to a nutritious, balanced meal, your kitchen requires a fine blend of lighting. It'll enable the space to function to your needs and help you ease through your daily routine!
Because of the many considerations when lighting a kitchen, it can become messy, confusing, and somewhat time-consuming. If you want to cater to every need of your family, it may take you a few weeks to draft out the best plan of attack.
So, if you're looking for inspiration and ideas to grease the gears of your mind, here are a few things you need to know about kitchen lighting. Whether you’re just refreshing your styling or tackling a significant reconstruction, this guide will help you prepare for your construction.
Before Anything Else
To garner the best possible lighting fixtures for your kitchen, you need to think about what you expect from your lights. Once you pin that down, it'll be easier for you to focus and less likely to overwhelm yourself with the task.
Refresh or Refit
The process will be more straightforward if you're just updating your existing lighting fixtures with something similar. Just check your installed fitting before swapping them out to match the specifications.
While refreshing your kitchen lights is like a walk in the park, refitting your entire kitchen is like running a marathon. However, the good thing about redoing your whole kitchen is starting with a blank slate. Here, you can really design and nit-pick the positioning of your luminaires and light all the areas that you need.
Generally, planning is essential whether you're refitting or refreshing. You need to get accurate measurements and ensure you're buying the fixtures before the construction begins. The reason being electrical and fixture work must be accomplished before installing kitchen islands, cabinets and other furniture pieces.
3 Layers of Lighting
To perfect your kitchen lighting design, you need to layer your lights and add general, task and accent lighting. Here’s how they differ.
General Lighting
Aka ambient lighting, this layer illuminates the majority of the space. Glass doors and windows are a source of natural general lighting. Still you can also get it from ceiling lamps, downlights, and pendants.
Task Lighting
It emphasises working areas, offering impeccable visibility for essential kitchen tasks like meal prep and cooking. Task lighting is critical near your sink and cooking area, assuring you're safe and can effortlessly see everything you should.
Accent Lighting
This layer is all about creating the ambience of the space. Instead of function, accent lights focus on the feeling. In addition, they're more decorative, giving your kitchen a boost in the visual department!
Selecting Your Kitchen Lights
As mentioned, there are three layers of lighting that you need to have to guarantee impeccable luminance and stunning visuals - general, task and accent lighting. The most common fixtures for general lighting include recessed downlights, pendants, and ceiling lamps. For task lighting, it's cabinet lights, spotlights, and recessed downlights. When it comes to accent lighting, you'll need strip lights and wall lights.
Ceiling Spotlights
Functional but decorative, ceiling spotlights are one of the most flexible fixtures you can add to your kitchen. Bar spotlights have fittings in a long series, while plate designs cluster the lamps together in a compact fixture. With several lights to brighten your kitchen, you can conveniently redirect each bulb to where you want.
Since it's practically one fitting, spotlights are more effortless to install than downlights that you need to mount individually. Also, it's relatively easy to swap out the bulbs, allowing you to customise your light's colour whenever you feel it!
Downlights
Recessed downlights lie flush against your ceiling. They're perfect for modern kitchen lighting since they offer a minimalist and clean appearance. Downlights can blend naturally into your design without being unobtrusive. Also, you can select between a fixed downlight or an adjustable downlight which you can tilt to change the angle of your light beams.
When purchasing downlights, opt for a fire-rated one. You'll be cutting a hole into your ceiling, compromising its fire integrity. Fire-rated downlights seal the hole you cut and delay the spread of fire. This feature is critical, especially if you have a multi-level home and plan to mount several recessed downlights.
Under Cabinet Lights
Other than your ceiling, you also need to add lights underneath your kitchen cabinets. Your countertops tend to be dim because of the cabinetry above. Under cabinet lights can eliminate all the shadows, making the surface beneath safe and bright for meal preps and other detail-oriented tasks.
If you have colour-temperature adjustable under cabinet lights, you can utilise the warm white light as accent lighting after you eat and just want to hang out for drinks!
Wall Lights
Wall lights are perfect for brightening display shelves or featuring unique parts of your kitchen. Either choose a style that complements your wall or get something that stands out and use it as a statement piece.
Pendant Lights
This fixture is a stylish way to illuminate your kitchen. You can suspend it over your island, breakfast bar, or table to attract attention and segment zones, or hang it at the centre of your kitchen for the whole kitchen to relish.
Also, you can choose either an eye-catching fixture or a few smaller pendants that you can line or cluster together. To spread out the beams, hang your pendants low. Otherwise, position it lower for a more intimate lighting design.
Refreshing or redoing your kitchen is thrilling and invigorating. It allows you to let your creativity flow and give your room an upgrade. Just remember, always prioritise safety when it comes to electricals, and don't forget to plan and measure everything.
If you're looking for premium-quality LED kitchen lights, you can visit our website, LED Supplier. We don't just have top-class lighting fixtures, but we also have excellent lighting accessories!
