Fast Kitchen Upgrades: Under-Cabinet Lighting
Want to enhance the experience of working in your kitchen without a major makeover? One of the easiest and least expensive ways to improve any kitchen is by adding under-cabinet lighting.
Lighting for kitchens generally falls into three categories: General lighting (like that big round light in the middle of the ceiling), ambient (wall washers that illuminate art, etc.) and task. Task lighting is any light that makes using your kitchen easier and, hands down, under-cabinet lighting is the best task lighting. Yet most kitchens we see don’t have it.
Under-cabinet lighting illuminates your counter worksurfaces without shadows. Usually halogen low voltage fixtures are used that have a low profile and mount directly to the bottom of your upper cabinets, either on the surface or recessed. You can buy them at most home centers and they can either be hardwired to a wall switch by an electrician (the preferred route) or plug into a wall socket and operate with a line switch. Installing can be as easy as peel and stick and plug in.
Once you’ve installed these you’ll wonder how you ever cooked without them. It literally makes any kitchen a much more enjoyable place to hang out. And they’re relatively inexpensive depending on how many you install and what type of installation you choose.
You can see several examples of these fixtures on the ylighting.com website listed in our Kitchen Resources List.