Light Up Your Kitchen

Lighting is no longer something that happens once a room is finished, designing a lighting scheme is key to the success of your kitchen, and with so many options available it pays to consider what you need as early as possible.

We always start our planning process by finding out how the room will be used and this will also provide a brief for your lighting scheme. Which areas will be used for food prep, how much socialising will take place in the kitchen, how much will the room be used in the evening? A key aspect of the kitchen design will also be to maximise the use of available natural light and we can then match this with your requirements to build a lighting scheme.

Modern technology provides a host of options to create a unique solution that is designed for your individual lifestyle. Energy efficient products and high tech controls also provide for flexibility and ease of use.

There are a wide range of products available to introduce lighting into many places in the kitchen, along open shelves, inside cupboards, behind glass doors, underneath worktops and in plinths. Separate switches can keep all of these options individually controlled.

Task lighting can be provided where most of the food preparation is going to take place. This is usually much-used areas like near your cooker or sink, task lighting ensures that you stay safe and can easily see everything that you need to.
Ambient lighting is added to create the right mood for when you are relaxing or entertaining in your kitchen.
LED lights are a great choice for the kitchen and can make a great feature used in strips or spots. Spots in a plinth for example can almost make kitchen islands look like they’re floating. LED strips can be curved to follow the flow of your furniture.

An island can be the focal point of your kitchen design and so it is often a good idea to have a dramatic pendant light over this to complete the look. Alternatively LED recessed downlights can be more discreet but still provide the light you need to work on the island.

Many new homes will be built with a sophisticated lighting system that gives options to control different zones and lighting levels around the home. For homes with a good broadband connection, lighting can be part of a Connected Home, allowing them to be controlled remotely. In our experience, most homeowners are looking for the simplest solutions, based around switches for separate zones. The good news is that most of the new products have been designed with energy efficiency in mind, so opting for LEDs will also keep energy bills low and they are also kinder to the environment.