How to design kitchen lighting

Map the work before the ceiling

Sketch the finished counters, sink, cooktop, tall cabinets and island, then mark your main chopping spot, where you read recipes and where you fill the coffee maker. Those places matter more than an even grid of circles on an empty floor plan. Settle the room in the kitchen layout planner first and add the lighting to a printout; the planner doesn’t calculate light.

Kichler sorts lighting into three layers: ambient light for moving around the room, task light for a job (it counts under-cabinet lights and recessed lights over the counter as task lighting) and accent light, where it puts island pendants. A pendant can still light the work if its shade sends light down onto the counter. You don’t need three fixtures everywhere, only every job covered.

Under wall cabinets: light from the front

When you lean over the counter, a ceiling light behind you casts your shadow onto the work. A light under the wall cabinet starts in front of you and below the cabinet. For the most light on the counter, KraftMaid puts strip or puck lights at the front of the cabinet, near the door, with the LEDs facing straight down. Over a shiny countertop, it mounts them on the inside back of the face frame, facing the backsplash, to cut glare, and a light rail along the bottom of the cabinets hides them.

Check the view from a stool as well as from the counter: a strip hidden from the cook can glare at someone sitting across the room, so compare a shielded bar or a strip with a diffuser, mounted as its maker says. Measure each cabinet’s underside separately, since dividers, recesses and the range hood interrupt a run. Upper cabinet height covers how high the cabinets sit.

Open counters, the sink and the cooktop

Where there is no wall cabinet, use a downlight or other fixture whose beam reaches the counter; a narrow and a wide beam behave very differently from the same spot, so ask for the product’s beam information or a lighting layout for your ceiling and counter heights. At the cooktop, count the hood’s or over-the-range microwave’s own light, and don’t fix a ceiling grid before the hood and cabinet runs are settled (range hood height). A sink under a window needs a check after dark: daylight covers the daytime dishes, not the evening ones.

Pendants over an island

For a plain rectangular island, center the pendants on the island, not on the room: centered in the kitchen, they can end up off the surface they are meant to light. If the island has a prep end and a seating end, try those uses before choosing a symmetric pair. Our kitchen island dimensions cover the island and the space around it; fix its position before the ceiling boxes go in.

Kichler’s rules of thumb: hang pendants with their bottoms 36 in above the counter, keep mini pendants 12 to 24 in apart between their widest points (more for bigger ones), and stay at least 6 in in from each end of the island. The example’s 16 in shades leave 20 in between them and 10 in at each end. That arithmetic checks the layout, not whether two fixtures light the whole top: an opaque shade can throw a small pool of light, another fixture a wide one. Hold a cardboard shade at the planned height to check the tallest person’s view and the sightline from the seats.

Brightness, color and dimmers

Compare LED brightness in lumens; watts measure the power used. The US Department of Energy’s example: an LED of about 1,100 lumens replaces an old 75 W bulb. Light color is measured in kelvins: a higher number looks cooler, a lower one warmer, and neither means more light on the counter. Compare, say, a 3000 K and a 4000 K sample against your own cabinets and countertop, and keep neighboring task lights the same unless the difference is deliberate.

There is no reliable fixture count for a “10 by 12 kitchen”: ceiling height, beam, cabinets, surfaces and the work all change it, so ask the supplier how much light reaches the counter at the planned mounting height. Put the switching in the brief, with room lights, task lights and pendants on separate controls, and check dimmers against the exact bulbs or fixtures and their drivers: Lutron recommends only bulbs it has tested, through its LED compatibility tool, and asking the LED maker about any it hasn’t listed.

Mock it up before the electrician comes

1. Outlines: mark the pendants on the island with paper, and hold a cardboard shade at the planned height to judge its bulk and the view past it.
2. A sample: where you can, try a plug-in sample after dark: stand at the board, lean over the sink and sit across the counter, looking for your own shadow, reflections and bare LEDs.
3. The plan: record each fixture’s model, its position from a fixed wall, its mounting height, its switch group and the job it does, and give that marked plan to the electrician with the cabinet layout. Add the lighting to the remodel checklist before the walls close up, and have the electrical work and products checked for your installation.

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