Kitchen Under-Cabinet Lighting Suggestions

[Jim Kaczmark]

Seems like an endless array of under cabinet lighting options available for my kitchen. I'd like to use a recessed style puck light. Have any of you been through this question before and have any suggestions? LED versus Halogen? Do you know of a value priced option instead of paying big bucks for something labeled "premium" for the same output / performance?

Any comments will be appreciated.
Jim

[Glenn Clabo]

It's been a while...but the first kitchen I put recessed halogen lights under the cabs...it heated up the cabs and the spices, etc didn't like it. The last one I put the pucks on the outside. They still get to hot to touch. If I had it all to over...and I still might...I'd suck it up and go LED. I put an led string inside a bathroom closet...lot's of light...little heat.

[Eric Haycraft]

I think that I spent 25 bucks on 6 halogen pucks at menards. They work, but the %&*&#@ uv filters fall off all the time. For the time being, halogens are the best when on a budget. If you are willing to spend a couple hundred bucks, go with a good quality LED. Make sure that any LED that you buy is on display so that you can see the brightness; most of what you find out there are barely brighter than a candle, so you need to see them in person before buying.
I installed my pucks under the cabinet, concealed all wiring and installed switched outlets above the cabinets that they plug into. That way I can switch them out with something else without much fuss. I always planned on putting in LEDs at some point, but will probably wait a year or two for the prices to come down to a reasonable level.

[Dallas Kerley]

Check out the Seagull Ambiance series of low voltage lighting. I have put them in 2 homes so far and they work great. They are a little pricy however.

http://www.seagulllighting.com/Linear-Lighting.htm

Dallas

[Larry Fox]

Check out the Seagull Ambiance series of low voltage lighting. I have put them in 2 homes so far and they work great. They are a little pricy however.

http://www.seagulllighting.com/Linear-Lighting.htm

Dallas

Exactly what I used in my kitchen and love it. Only thing is the wire doesn't stay in the track very well around bends. A clear wire-tie takes care of that and it is never seen. The ability to reconfigure the arrangement on the fly is a nice feature.

[Tom Godley]

When I was a kid our place in NYC had a really cool kitchen -- I have been using some of the ideas from that kitchen since I put my first kitchen in a house over 25 years ago.

I always incorporate a false front when I have the cabinets custom made -- I add a front trim strip when I have used stock cabinets - This allows you to use regular FL strip lights. I install them flush to the front of the cabinet with the bulb facing the wall. This allows for strong even light that does not glare - and no spots on the counter. The bulbs are cheap you can buy them in many different K degrees and they last a long time.

Another thing that I do is install a wiremold strip between the light and the wall for the length of the cabinet - this allows for many points to plug things in without seeing the outlets on the wall. Really great for bar areas where you can install a mirror without any holes!

I find the puck lights to be cheap/ hot and the bulbs burn out all the time. The seagull product is nice -- I have used it as a crown/cove light around a room. They are $$ and also get hot - but the seagull bulbs tend to last longer.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

I'm interested in these for undercounter lighting.

[Jim Becker]

I went with a (WAC) mini-track solution for under counter lighting as it lets you get more even distribution than pucks. The lamps I used are Xenon rather than Halogen. The system uses a remote transformer and is dim-able if you choose. Using this approach allowed me to better target the lighting for the tasks without having visible fixtures.

[Tom Godley]

Sorry yes .....fluorescent


The Seagull product is Xenon also - they make them in 5w/10w in both 12/24v. They work well -- but they get very hot.

WAC gives you a lot of bang for the buck - I like the small square recessed units that they make.

I just think with a little planing other light products are better

[Lee Koepke]

I cheaped my out of that this Christmas ... I found some battery operated LEDs that attached with velcro (or screws).

I wasnt in the mood to rewire the kitchen, and LOML wasnt real specific on where she actually wanted them.

I consider it a Temp-to-Perm solution ...

[mike holden]

My personal experience was to have a twelve volt puck system installed below the cabinets and twelve volt "rope"lighting in the toe kicks.
Looks great --- When it works
I will probably do it over myself, with 120v led lights under the cabinets, and give up on the toekicks, as they are essentially unaccessible to this old body of mine.

Advice: do NOT use a twelve volt system!

Mike

[Tom Klass]

I went with the puck lights under the cabinets, had to change bulbs constantly. Usually last about 2-3 months finally got fet up and changed them out to rope lights. Bad investment one section burned out in less than a month. changed them out to mini florecent from Lowes, cost a little over $100. just waiting a little longer to replace the lights above the cabinets and I'll go with the mini's from Lowes again.
good luck tom

[John Durscher]

I just completed a display cabinet for my wife's pottery. I'm going to try LED strip lighting. They have these little 4" strips that can be connected together for whatever length you want. This will hopefully give even lighting for the cabinet. Also if one of the strips fails, I can simply replace the bad lights. I have also found dimmers made for LED's since I'm not really certain how bright this is going to be.

The claimed advantages to LED's is that they put out almost no heat and they are supposed to last a very long time. They also don't use much electricity so you can run a bunch of them off a single transformer. Of course I've never used these things before, so I don't know how it will turn out. I should be ordering the stuff in the next week or so. I'll let you know what I learn.

John

[Christopher Stahl]

Check out the Seagull Ambiance series of low voltage lighting. I have put them in 2 homes so far and they work great. They are a little pricy however.

http://www.seagulllighting.com/Linear-Lighting.htm

Dallas

I have these as well and I really like them. Only issue I've had is occasionally you have to give one of the lights a tap because for some reason they don't make a perfect connection.

[Jim C Bradley]

Hi,

My experience with halogens = very bad.

Hot, short lamp life, miserable to change burned out lamp for a new one.
I took them out. Nothing is far superior to the halogens I had. I had 8 units with 4 lamps in 8 cabinets. They were all the same, it was not one defective unit.

I replaced them with very small incandescent floods that I could conceal. This was much better. Still hot, but not as hot. Still short lamp life, but not as short. We did gain that it was much easier to replace a lamp.

I have not used the cool units described in the thread---but they have to be better than what I tried.

Enjoy,

Jim