Cabinet Lighting

Cabinet Lighting

Kitchen cabinets can be dark places, especially the base cabinets. Fishing around for pots, pans and other utensils in a lower cabinet is okay until you get to the back of the cabinet. That’s where the light from the kitchen fixtures ends. In other uses cabinets lights are used to provide detailed lighting for pantries and especially for china cabinets where task lights can highlight silver and fine china in a display setting.

There are a few choices for lighting the cabinets and all are good. Speaking from an energy-savings point of view the LEDs are the best choice for short lighting periods while small fluorescents would be most cost-effective if they are being left on.

They can be the small but efficient “puck lights” which go up underneath the cabinet and light up the countertop. They are easily attached by screws or a glue strip and run off a transformer which is hidden in a central area close to a an outlet which can be wired to a switch. The beauty of these devices is that more “pucks” can be added to the system by a daisy chain to the transformer. As well, the lights are available as LED’s or small incandescents.

Fluorescents are also a good choice for task lighting under the counter and can light up a larger area that the “pucks.” They come in slim tube designs which operate by a switch on the side of the fixture. In this way each light can be operated separately from the others where the light is needed.

Small pot lights are great fro china cabinets. They recess into the top of the cabinet and are no available in both halogen and xenon. The latter gas-filled light runs cooler than the halogen and use less energy.

LED’s are available in flexible strips which provide a unique curtain of light. They are attached by 2-way tape and can bend around corners. There are approximately 30 LED lights per strip and the strips can be connected to other strips or shortened.

Another great feature is the switching mechanism for cabinet doors which, like a fridge, only come on when the door opens.