Options for lighting your kitchen

How do you use your kitchen? Think about that and then decide where task lighting should be. When designing lighting for cooking, be sure to have adequate brightness as well as a good distribution of light around the kitchen and in specific work areas. Ceiling lights can provide the brightest overall lighting, but you will want smaller, focused lights for individual work areas.

Under cabinet lighting is great for task lighting, as well as providing muted light when you just want to see a small area of the kitchen without lighting the whole room up.

Inside cabinet lighting can highlight heirloom china and curio cases, not to mention making small items easier to find on the back shelf. Especially in the undercounter cabinets, interior lighting makes it so much easier to see exactly what you are looking for.

LED lighting is popular due to its low energy use and similar appearance to incandescent lighting. Miniature recessed lighting is a great option for inside cabinets, or the underside of cabinets. LED lights come in tape, rope and strips, which make them versatile options for many applications in the kitchen.

The quality of the light you choose will affect the atmosphere in the room. Incandescent light provides soft, warm yellowish light, and is usually used for recessed cans or downlights. Halogen lights produce a crisp white light that is appropriate for task lighting, fluorescent lights now come in many different shades from warm to cool.

Here is an internet source that provides information on the energy use of the types of light bulbs available today: http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/lighting/bulbs.html