How to Plan Kitchen Lighting - The Complete exact Guide
Lighting can make or break a room - and this is especially true in the kitchen: the ultimate multi-tasking room. A multifunctional space for preparing food, entertaining, and perhaps working from home, the right kitchen lighting needs to cater for every function.
At
exact, we carefully plan every aspect of lighting for our customer’s kitchens. We want to create an equally beautiful and practical space, so we need to understand the use of the space, and every detail of the current space in order to create a successful lighting scheme.
With many different options and sources of potential light within the
kitchen, it is important we consider the use of every single one. Here are some of the main light sources we consider and include in our customer’s kitchens:
Natural Light
The kitchen is an ideal place to incorporate natural light design through skylights, windows and windowed doors. While too much artificial light has been found to negatively influence mental health, natural light has the opposite effect, improving mood and energy levels. Plus, the obvious energy saving potential is a bonus, with natural lighting decreasing home energy consumption.
When considering adding natural lighting to a kitchen, we always think about the direction of the sun in comparison to the windows. While North facing kitchens benefit from light for most of the day, South facing kitchens are also ideal for energy saving and natural light renovations. For East and West oriented kitchens, the light will be brighter and more intense either in the morning or evening, so it's worth considering when the kitchen will be used to determine what natural light source should be incorporated.
Task Lighting
The kitchen isn’t just a pretty space but a practical one too. This is where task lighting comes in - an essential type of kitchen lighting designed to create a shadow-free work environment when carrying out tasks in the kitchen, like cooking at the hob or chopping on a work surface. This may come in the form of worktop lights, such as under-cabinetry lighting to illuminate meal prep areas, over-the-sink lighting or hob lighting, creating cohesion across the worktops to provide the necessary light to cook safely and easily.
Pendant Lighting
If your hob or food prep area is situated on the kitchen island, you will be unable to make use of under-cabinet lighting to adequately light up this area. However, this opens up a host of ideas that can define the style and design of your kitchen, including the opportunity for pendant lights.
Pendant lights are very popular and are a fantastic design statement depending on the pendant shade you choose. Combined with LED lighting around the room, dedicated island lighting can ensure that task areas are adequately lit. On the other hand, pendant lighting can be used as a form of ambient lighting, providing a statement feature in the room, rather than a direct source of illumination.
Accent Lighting
Accent lighting is used to draw attention to certain features of your kitchen, crossing the line from creating a purely functional kitchen to an aesthetically pleasing one. These lights can be layered on top of more functional lights to accentuate favourite elements. Smart LED colour-changing strip lights along the cabinetry and under the island are popular with our customers, providing the option for changing your lighting depending on the mood you want to create - from bright and entertaining, to calming, soft, mood lighting.
Our skilled designers consider every aspect of your kitchen, meticulously designing it to produce a space that is aesthetically pleasing and practical for the whole family. Lighting is just one of the many considerations that come into play to design the ideal living space.
To discover our wide range of bespoke, German
kitchens that can be designed to your exact specification,
book a visit to our showroom in Barkham, Wokingham, today.
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