Nothing will take away from your newly remodeled kitchen than poor or inadequate lighting and insufficient power for appliances. Even if you are just changing cabinet hardware and repainting existing cabinets, lighting will determine the success of your project.

Home owners usually make three major mistakes when it comes to kitchen lighting:

• Choose the wrong kind of light for a given need or task,
• Install too few light switches to control subsets of lights, and
• Don't consider the electrical load of new appliances and adequacy of electrical panel box.

Kinds of Lighting

For a kitchen, you need to be really concerned about two kinds of lighting called genera/ambient and task lighting. Some lighting experts also talk about accent lighting. There's a bit of overlap.

As the names imply, task lighting provides lighting for the task at hand and accent lighting highlights features in your kitchen. For example, under cabinet lighting provides light when you are chopping celery and also shows off that fancy backsplash.

Definitions and Examples
When you go shopping for lighting, you should keep the following definitions and examples of lighting in mind. Always ask yourself, what do I want the light to do?

1. Ambient or general lighting illuminates the entire room. This kind of lighting is central to any kitchen,
2. Task lighting provides illumination for specific tasks. These can be for cooking, preparing food, or looking at a recipe book. These lights are usually brighter and really provide strong light where you need it most and where general just is not sufficient, and
3. Accent lighting highlights certain features in your kitchen. This could be artwork, an interesting marble tile backsplash with stencils in it, etc.

Examples of kinds of lighting

• General or ambient lighting can include recessed down lights, cove lighting, soffit lighting, track lights, and surface-mounted lights,
• Task lighting normally includes valance lighting, pendant lights, under-cabinet lights and portable fixtures like can lights, and
• Accent lighting can include sconces, track lights and under-cabinet lights. LED lights like the ones shown below, can be excellent for undercounter lighting and to add beauty.

Lighting Switches and diversifying your lighting scheme
The most common mistake made in kitchen lighting designs is not have enough switches to control various subsets of lights. In our kitchen, instead of having one switch to control all of our recess lights, we have three separate switches. You should and can apply this to all your lighting needs in anyroom.

Having separate switches gives you the flexibility of reducing your
lighting needs during very sunny days where you only need 1/3 of your recessed lights turned on.

Don't be afraid to mix things up in your kitchen. Just follow the definitions above. There are hundreds of choices online to meet your lighting needs and also light emitting diodes or LEDs are worth looking at.

Special planning is needed for pendant lights that go over peninsulas. Make sure that the wall cabinet door will be able to clear (not hit) any pendant lights you are planning. This depends on the cabinet size which can generally range from 24 to 36 inches. Also see our article on how high to mount pendant lights.

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Kitchen remodeling can range from simple tasks to more complex tasks. Even if you're considering doing a lot of work yourself, you might need help or want to talk to someone about:

• Refacing your existing cabinets,
• Installing new cabinets, or
• A full kitchen remodel that included design, cabinets, appliances, etc.

You can talk with a pre-screened kitchen expert in your area about the above subjects. Please visit our Guide to Kitchen Remodeling. You are under no obligation and your information will be protected.

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What we did in our kitchen and shopping tips
We used task lighting in two places. There are two pendant lights over the peninsular. Our under-cabinet lights do function as task lighting, but also provide accent lighting and give the kitchen a good lift. There are two switches to control the under-cabinet lighting.

We also use accent lighting in the form of can lights near paintings and plants. The can lights provides a great deal of interest with various shadows on the all, on art and on plants both living and artificial. See our article for tips on shopping for lighting.

Fancy appliances may require more amperage
Another common mistake that many homeowners make is overlooking the power needs of new appliances. This is fairly common in high end electric and gas ovens and stoves like Wolf and Viking.

See a video interview with a kitchen designer for additional information on kitchen lighting do's and don't. See a video interview with a kitchen designer for additional information on kitchen lighting do's and don't.