5 Ways To Light Your Kitchen
The Kitchen, the heart of the home. A space for testing your culinary ability, to socialise, relax & work. The kitchen has become the most versatile room in the home and often serves more than one purpose. With a versatile space should come versatile lighting, here are 5 ways to light your kitchen. We know that a combination of some or all of these ideas will lead to great kitchen lighting.
1. General Lighting
Nearly every space requires a level of general light and the kitchen is no exception. Whether you go for downlights, strip lights or surface mounted fittings, enough general light in the kitchen is essential. We would also recommend controllable lighting in such an important space.
Surface mounted fittings, such as the Ray 1.0 by Weaver & Ducre, can give your kitchen character as well as providing a great source of general light.
The kitchen above shows various types of recessed strip and downlighting. Downlights with narrow beam angles are great for creating effects on walls, like on the right hand side. Medium beam angles are good for the centre of the room to cast light over as much surface area as possible, while avoiding unwanted glare.
If you are short on space or do not want to carry out the extra wiring for individual downlights, you could use a flushmount fitting, such as the Smithfield by Flos.
2. LED Strip
LED Strip Lighting is currently one of the hottest trends in interior design. Introducing it to your kitchen lighting scheme can create stunning results.
In this kitchen, we have used under shelf and under counter LED Strip. The under shelf strips give off the right light to provide task lighting in the area below. The under counter strips bring the whole space to life by creating a comforting ambience and modern backlight effect.
Lighting architraves with LED strip creates a homogenous glow in areas of architectural interest. Underlighting breakfast bars reduces shadows and dark spots, while drawing your eye to the lines of the space.
3. Wall Lights
Wall lights have come a long way in terms of design and functionality in the last decade. We have seen an increase in customers opting to include wall lighting in their home lighting schemes.
Wall Lights can come in any shape or size. They can provide task lighting or ambiant lighting, such as the Melange Elongated Sconce by Kelly Wearstler and Visual Comfort.
4. Pendant Lights
The trend that has never gone away in kitchen lighting schemes – the pendant over breakfast bar, island or dining table. The ‘Pendant’ category of decorative lighting is full of opportunity to give your kitchen a touch of individuality.
The Hicks pendant by Visual Comfort looks great when hung in pairs over islands or breakfast bars.
How about using the Iconic ‘Aim’ by Flos over your worktop? You can direct light in the direction required and be sure to create an eye catching centrepiece for your kitchen.
If you use your dining space to work, do homework or play games at, a pendant, or cluster of pendants, is a good idea! It will create task lighting for that area.
5. Track Lighting
There is a growing trend of using track lighting in the home. These lighting systems would traditionally be seen in commercial settings, however, lighting manufacturers have been able to refine these typically large and powerful lights, into sleak and minimal systems, perfect for residential use.
If you are renovating or building in a modern style, track lights offer great versatility as you can add and remove different light fittings as you please. Additionally, most fittings allow you to direct light to wherever you need it.
As well as being extremely versatile, we think track lighting systems look really cool too, like in these modern apartments.
The Running Magnet system by Flos offers a beautfiul, minimal design and ultimate functionality. You can simply pop different light fittings in and out for different tasks. It can be installed in ceilings, walls and floors!
If you would like to add track lighting to your lighting scheme in any space, contact our team of lighting experts today!
Lightsource Top Tip
CRI (Colour Rendering Index,) is an important factor to consider when lighting your kitchen and eating space. The maximum rating for CRI is 100, meaning that light fitting or bulb will produces true colour rendering. Take a look at this picture of strawberries;
The difference in colour is remarkable. You can see how a low CRI rating does not give a true representation of colour and a high CRI rating does. Keep this in mind for areas that you prepare and servce food.
Check out our Kitchen Inspiration Board on Pinterest or speak to one of our Lighting Experts today to get the perfect lighting for your kitchen.
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