Before you start planning your new kitchen, it’s important to consider your lighting options, both from a practicality and design point of view.
Lighting is no longer just a kitchen accessory, it’s a necessity. Creating a tailored lighting plan in the early stages of your kitchen design can not only help make your space feel lighter and brighter, it can also be cleverly used to make a room appear bigger, or can be manipulated to draw attention to focal features.
Our designers are here to help you make those all important lighting choices- but if you’re looking for inspiration at the moment, here are some of the key design elements to consider.
Types of Kitchen Lighting
When picking the best lighting for your kitchen, it’s important to assess the everyday tasks you’ll be carrying out in the space. For example, you’re likely to use your kitchen for food preparation and serving, but, will you also be using it to dine and socialise? A good place to start is to consider these three key lighting choices:
Task Lighting
Task lighting provides effective lighting to undertake everyday activities such as food preparation and serving. Perfectly positioned above the correct work surfaces, task lighting makes the kitchen an efficient working space whilst helping to eliminate dark corners and spaces that suffer from low natural light.
Mood Lighting
Also referred to as feature or accent lighting, mood lighting is used to add dimension and depth to the room in order to create atmosphere and provide ambience to the room. This can include pendant lights above a kitchen island or dining area to brighten the social space, wow-factor lighting in a pantry or drinks unit, or strip lighting added beneath units on the plinth line.
Convenience Lighting
Convenience lighting has a specific purpose – it’s directional and intended to be focused towards a specific area, or to be used for a particular job in drawers or in cabinets. For example, convenience lighting can be used to illuminate dark corner cupboards or cabinets, alcoves that don’t receive much natural lighting or to spotlight certain items of shelves.
Natural Lighting
When planning your new kitchen and the orientation of your design, it’s also important to assess how much natural light the room gets.
If you have a north-facing room, it’s going to need more artificial lighting as they receive little or no direct sunlight throughout the day, whereas, if you have a south or west facing kitchen, it will be naturally bright throughout the day, meaning you should only need lights on an evening.
If you know your space doesn’t have a lot of natural light, this can also help you plan the colours of your walls, cabinets, flooring and worktops before choosing artificial lights, as high-gloss finishes and lighter shades will help to reflect light around, making a space appear brighter.
We hope you’ve found this information useful if you’re looking to plan lighting into your upcoming kitchen renovation contact us today.
