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

[Jim Kaczmark]

This has been an excellent thread, and I have learned much from it. I will steer clear from the halogen puck type lights as a result of your input.

The Seagull linear lighting does look to be a very nice item. To those that have used it, any installation tips? Depth of light valence you used under your cabinets? Seems like this is the only "finish" one could use for this installation... no finished 1/4" panel flush with the bottom of the cabinet & recessed lights with this option for example.

I liked Eric H's idea of putting switched outlets above the cabinets. Thanks for the idea. The idea seemed particularly useful with the Seagull product. With even a modest room left for scribing the cabinet sides, one would have pleanty of room to run the wire up between the wall and back of the cabinet.

John D: What specific brand / model of LED strip lighting did you use? Others try these?

Jim B: Which specific head did you use with the WAC mini-track system... also what was the height of valence under your cabinet that you used to conceal it?

LED options... anyone have any suggestions on LED puck type lights? Specific make / model that would be bright? Like Eric said, many can be pretty dim.

Thanks in advance for your inputs!
Jim

[Bob Aquino]

We have been living with the puck lights now for about 8 years. The original owner installed them and I added on about 4 years ago. They aren't the best by far, but they aren't that bad either. The covers have fallen off probably about all of them by now, but that isnt such a bad thing. It probably helps them to dissapate heat better. On average I replace about 2-3 bulbs a year and these lights are used constantly. One thing you have to be careful with is touching the bulbs, I am real careful not to get any oil from my fingers on them as that shortens the life. They do throw off a lot of bright light and make a big difference in the ambience of the kitchen. When I added to the system I also added rope lighting on top of the cabinets wired in with the under cabinet lights. The effect is very nice. I havent had any problems with the rope lights either. If I were to do it over again, I might go with some sort of LED setup. Or maybe with some of the very small compact flourescent bulbs that are showing up on the market now.

[John Durscher]

John D: What specific brand / model of LED strip lighting did you use? Others try these?


Jim,

I haven't ordered these yet - the glass for the cabinets just came in so I wanted to get that done (and paid for) first. The lights I am leaning towards are at http://www.theledlight.com/light_bars.html They aren't pretty, but they'll be hidden inside the cabinet. This place also has LED puck lights. They also have dimmers for these things as well so I should be able to adjust to the desired brightness. I'll let you know how it works out.

Thanks!

John

[Jim Kaczmark]

As a result of your input, here is my solution to my kitchen under cabinet lighting. One posted a link to another product at TheLEDLight.com. While at that site, I saw their "Linear LED Module". The URL is below:

http://www.theledlight.com/linear-led-modules.html

I'll plan to mount this directly behind my face frame, perhaps on a filler block to bring the LED down to near the bottom edge of the face frame. Behind the LED, I'll attach a false cabinet bottom (1/4" plywood) stained to match the cabinets. Should result in a very good looking setup.

I'll experiment with installing the LED pointing directly down, or angled back 45 degrees as shown on the product literature.

Thanks for your inputs.
Jim

[Dallas Kerley]

The install on the Seagull lights was pretty straigh forward. The nice thing is that you can run lights along the bottom and top of the cabinets and use a dimmer to control them. Install them behind the front valence, where they can't be seen as easly. In my mothers house they installed them in the back and you can really see the bulbs. The lights work esentially like low voltage landscaping lights. You run the wire and then snap it in a track that holds it to the bottom of the cabinet. Then the light holders just pop in the track piercing the low voltage cable. They are really low profile, so you only need about a 1 " lip on the bottom of the cabinet to hide them.

Dallas