Under Cabinet Lighting

When designing your next kitchen renovation, consider under cabinet lighting. Not only will it add flexibility to your kitchen lighting, but it will provide that direct task lighting to your counter tops which will make life a little easier for you.

You have many options to choose from. Several models are bulky, but give lots of light. Other choices include miniature track lighting, which conceals better, but doesn't illuminate as well.

Still another option is individual puck lights (shaped like small hockey pucks). In any case, a wooden light strip applied to the bottom of your wall-hung cabinets will hide any of these models.

Just about all models of under cabinet lighting run on low voltage, so you'll need a transformer hidden some place. You will also have to run a low voltage wire from the transformer to the beginning of each light run.

If your walls are open, have the wire come out at the bottom of the wall-hung cabinets and staple the wire to the underside of the cabinet. If the walls will remain closed, put the transformer in one of the cabinets and again staple to wire from the transformer to the lighting fixture.

Each run of cabinets will need a feed wire. If a run is broken by a microwave oven or a range hood, you will need a feed on each side of the break.

Types Of Bulbs

You can get 4 types of bulbs - florescent, incandescent, xenon, and LED. Incandescent will give a warmer light that florescent. Special glare shields on the fixtures will prevent the bulbs from being seen, even from irregular angles.

LED is much more expensive, but will last 20 years and will pay for themselves very quickly due to less energy consumption. Florescent lights are the cheapest, and give the best illumination, but the fixtures are typically bigger.

The bottom line is that you have to go to the store and see what each of these looks like before deciding which is best for you. You should ask to make sure that your selection is dim-able. This will give you the ultimate degree of control for these counter top lights.

I highly recommend that you install some type of under cabinet lighting in your kitchen. You'll be very glad you did.

If you want to ask a question about under cabinet lighting, contact me by clicking here.

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