Lori wrote the following:

Our kitchen has only recessed lighting, and the placement is interesting, to say the least. There's definitely not enough light in the room for tasking. The ceiling is sloped, and is over 12' high. There are 5 lights - one over the fridge, one by the pantry, two over the stove, and one over the sink.

I bought two mini pendant light conversion kits, the type that screw into the light sockets like bulbs. I'm hanging them where light is needed most, over the stove area. There's a five-foot distance from the ceiling to the top of the cabinets. Will it be all right to install them to hang just to the height of the cabinet tops? Thanks for any advice.

Here's my reply:

I'm assuming there's no hood above the stove and you've got a reasonably good venting system. If not your pendants are going to take a beating.

The National Kitchen & Bath Association recommends 24” of clearance between the cooking surface and a protected noncombustible surface above it.  Building codes require at least 30” of clearance between the cooking surface and an unprotected/combustible surface above it. (IRC M 1901.1). See diagram in http://www.nkba.org/guidelines/kitchen_18.aspx

Typical wall cabinets are about 42 inches tall including any decorative crown molding. So the distance from the top of your cabinets to the stove should be about 60 inchs or 5 feet. If you hang those pendants so that the bottom of the pendnant is 5 feet above the stove, I'm not certain they will provide the light you need. I would experiment and hang the pendant light between 30 inches (minimum distance) and 60 inches above the stove to see if there is a happy medium.

For other kitchen guidelines, you may want to see our article on Kitchen Design Guidelines.