Choosing under cabinet lighting

Under cabinet lighting is not just limited to kitchens, many homes and work places have cabinets on the wall such as home studies, bedroom, bathrooms and offices. Well chosen and positioned lighting can transform an uninspiring room in to an inviting haven. It’s one thing to have a room that looks great in the day, but if when the sun goes down it’s a starkly lit space looking more like your local fast food joint that a place or relaxation it can soon loose it’s appeal.

Fitting under cabinets lights can be just to give an accent to a room, or they can perform a function. Lights fitted with a dimmer for example can satisfy both functions. Fitting the lights under a kitchen cabinet means that you will not be working in your own shadow. Once you’ve finished cooking you can dim lights and they’ll illuminated your natural slate tile and work top beautifully.
 

There used to be only one option for lighting underneath cabinets - fluorescent tubes. Traditional fluorescent tubes gave out a horrible greenish hue of bright white light. With the addition of an expensive separate module these could be dimmed. The result was equally as horrible… a slightly dimmer greenish hue! New advances in lighting technology have opened up the options available for the under cabinet light. Fundamentally there are three technologies available for putting lights under your cabinets:

• Fluorescent Technology
  
• Halogen Technology
  
• LED Technology.

Let’s take a look at each of these in turn:

As previously discussed there are fluorescent tubes, all though the originals gave out a horrible light there are now tubes that have different K temperatures. Different what? K temperatures, without getting too technical the visual warmness of a light it measured in K. The lower the K value the warmer the light. For example, a traditional incandescent bulb is about 2500K a standard fluorescent tube is around 6500K. You can now get “warm white” fluorescent tubes, these are about 2700K. The disadvantage of getting fluorescent tubes is that they are difficult to dim.

These come in a lot of different forms but they can be broken down in to two main types – low voltage and mains voltage. The will all require power from the mains but the low voltage version will require a transformer between the power source and first light. Local regulations will apply to your lighting, particularly in the bathroom, observe these regulations carefully, they may well require you to use low voltage lights in certain areas of the bathroom.

Main powered halogen under cabinet lights can usually be dimmed by using a normal dimming socket. Low voltage lights are a bit more difficult to dim. The will firstly require a dimmable transformer and secondly they will in some cases require a specific dimmer. Having said this it is easier and cheaper to dim low voltage halogen lights than fluorescent tubes.

Why would you choose low voltage over mains voltage?
Local regulations will apply to your lighting, particularly in the bathroom, observe these regulations carefully, they may well require you to use low voltage lights in certain areas of the bathroom. The other factor to consider is the quality of light. The low voltage versions tend to produce a brighter white light, these look great if you have a lot of chrome or brushed steel accessories in your kitchen.

This is the newest of all lighting technologies, and as such is the most expensive option. LED lights can come in a range of different colours some even change colour. When LED lights first came out the white light was very blue – casting a cold light similar to fluorescent tubes – in recent year warm white LEDs have been developed. Present models of LED lights do not allow for the LED to be changed. This is not a problem though as the life expectancy of and LED is up to 30000 hrs and beyond.

You will find that the cost of the LED unit is more expensive that other under cabinet lighting solutions. That said, over the lifetime of the product it will work out cheaper, LED light sources consume less power than traditional lighting making it cheaper to run.

When choosing the fixture try to ascertain the K value of the white as one manufactures warm white may be quite different to that of another.

Dimmable versions are available but are very expensive and would probably cancel out the cost benefits of choosing an LED light. This video below excellently shows the difference between warm white and cool white LED.

In summary if you want to enhance your home and improve it’s functionality then adding under cabinet lighting is a great thing to do. Everyone has there own aspirations towards lighting and it is a very personal decision. Fitting under cabinet lights can be done at any time, but fitting them when you are renovating your kitchen is easiest (you don't have to empty the cupboards!

LED under cabinet lights are probably the future, that said, currently the most flexible lighting available to the consumer is the halogen range of lighting but if you have a little electronics knowledge though there are many possibilities available with LED lighting. They cost very little and their inherent low voltage nature makes them safe to run in most environments.