Home Decor Tips: Kitchen Lighting

Your kitchen is the hub of family life in your home. Not only is it a place where you have meals with your family and your little ones sit and do their drawing or homework, but it might also be the place where your friends gather around and you use this for entertaining. And all this in addition to preparing and cooking food too. Therefore, a flexible lighting scheme in the kitchen is a must if you are to provide adequate lighting for all these different tasks.

Furthermore, these days a kitchen might not just be one small room in the corner of the house. These days more kitchen areas tend to be larger, spacious, open-plan rooms encompassing the living room areas and TV and sofas as well.
And this is also a room or living space that is going to be used both day and night.

Therefore, plan your kitchen lighting carefully and you will ensure that you do not leave out any important pieces.

Consider the general lighting in the kitchen area first. Whilst fluorescent lighting was a popular choice for kitchens before, the tubes themselves are not that attractive and the light they produce is too harsh and clinical and definitely not conducive to a cozy, intimate meal.
Also, if your kitchen worktops are made from highly reflective materials then the light from fluorescents can produce too much reflection. The other problem wit fluorescents is that they can be difficult to dim and therefore is too harsh at night.

Task lighting is as important as the general lighting and especially so in the kitchen. Kitchen task lighting tends to fall into two types: kitchen island lighting and under-cupboard lighting. Kitchen island lighting is usually provided by hanging pendant light fixtures or an arrangement of downlights above the island. The advantage of pendant lights is that they tend to be more decorative and throw a soft pool of light over the kitchen island area.
Under-cupboard lighting can consist of either tungsten, fluorescent or low-voltage lighting.

Track lighting is often used to light up kitchens but this needs to be fitted properly.
You need to consider the size and shape of your kitchen first. A small, galley kitchen is perfect for a central track but otherwise having track lighting in the middle of the kitchen so that it directs light onto the worktops is wrong - unless you have a show home.
As soon as you position yourself over a worktop to begin a culinary task, your body will create a shadow which is no good. The correct way to position track lighting in the kitchen is to have it a lot closer to the work surface, about 1 meter away from the cupboards.

If you want to ensure your kitchen is properly lit, uou will need more than one track and, depending on the shape of your kitchen, you might even require a square arrangement of tracks.

By far, the most attractive and effective kitchen lighting fixture is recessed downlights with wide beam lamps. Do not position these in the middle of the room as this focuses the light onto the floor instead of the outer edges of the kitchen thus causing the perimeter work surfaces to be badly lit and dark and dingy.

If you take all these factors into consideration as you plan where to install the different lighting fixtures in your kitchen, you can be certain of having a bright lit and welcoming kitchen with the right amount of kitchen lighting for all culinary tasks.

If you take all these factors into consideration as you plan where to install the different lighting fixtures in your kitchen, you can be certain of having a brightly lit and welcoming kitchen with the right amount of kitchen lighting for all culinary tasks.

Lauren Tyler is a writer for LampLightWorld.com.