A Practical Guide to Kitchen Lighting

Kitchens are the single most challenging rooms to light. No other room serves so many functions — from basic food preparation to evening entertaining. Often we don’t know if a kitchen lighting scheme will work until the end of a project, yet all our efforts hinge on this last crucial step. Good lighting will show off your work, while dismal lighting can sour the customer’s appreciation of an otherwise nice kitchen. Most of the up-front work of lighting a kitchen is knowing what lamps to spec and where to place them. This is usually more complicated than in other rooms, which are used for only one type of activity. In a kitchen you need three different kinds of lighting —