Interesting kitchen light ideas are what make a kitchen really come to life. Yet still a great many people assume they can get away with any old lighting layout. It’s just not so – a good kitchen can be ruined by crummy lighting and conversely a decidedly average kitchen can be made to look really top notch with the application of a few simple lighting design principles.
What counts with lighting has relatively little to do with the amount of money you throw at the issue; it’s all about using your head. Looking at where light should go for maximum effect and equally importantly where to tone things down. You need to strike a balance between being overpowering and underwhelming and ensure that the right areas are appropriately lit.
It might seem daunting, but it’s not exactly rocket science and essentially is down to understanding the different kinds of lighting required in a kitchen and how to balance them. There are four broad classes of light, called: task, ambient, accent and decorative lighting.
Task lighting is obvious to most people. A kitchen is a functioning space where things happen – food is prepared, cooked and presented for example. It’s important to be able to see clearly what you are doing with your hands and so task lighting has to be available in those places where tasks are performed but not spill over to where it’s not wanted. Strip lights under overhead wall units are a typical example of how to achieve this effect.
Ambient lighting is either overlooked or over-used by many people. Its purpose is to provide a sort of background level of light that is not itself especially noticeable. If you have too much it washes everything else out, but too little and other lights in the room start to struggle to do their job properly and you end up with harsh contrasts everywhere.
The essential difference between accent and decorative lighting is that the former aims to draw attention to an existing feature within the space whereas the latter is it itself a feature. Both are used in kitchen lighting designs to add sparkle and reflect the owner’s taste and personality. By highlighting for example a set of chrome pans hanging from a rack you can suggest that your kitchen is at heart a “cook’s kitchen” yet at the same time also subtly draw attention away from any areas you’re less keen on.
Of course, some types of kitchen lighting don’t fit neatly into just one category or another. A classic example is decorative pendant lighting, often used to accent a kitchen island but also a form of task lighting for anyone using the island. There are no rules that cannot be bent to suit your purpose, but where kitchen lighting designs are concerned it certainly helps to have a basic understanding of what the rules are in the first place.
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