The importance of lighting in the kitchen

Lighting is so important in a kitchen - deciding whether the area requires cool or warm lighting as the colour tone can completely transform the room.

It should almost always be zoned as cooking and preparation areas should be well illuminated whereas dining and living areas may contain more mood lighting.  Here's some great advice from our designers:

-       Lighting should be direct onto worksurfaces to dispel annoying shadows

-       Lighting around the base of units provides a feature and gives mood lighting in a functional area

-       If you have good natural light make the most of this with glass roof, large opening doors and light colours as nothing beats natural light.

We'd also suggest investing in a good lighting design consultant to work with your kitchen designer, such as Scott Ferrier at Light Medium.  Scott commented; "Good light in your home is not to be undervalued, and valuable lighting design advice can make a design take the next level in success.  A good lighting design consultant can work with your kitchen designer to make the most of your space and investment."

We asked Scott what is on trend for kitchen lighting at the moment, and he said; "Linear LED lighting built into the furniture is a must, with the actual LED light source hidden from direct view as much as possible."

We then went on to ask what type of lighting would he recommend for different areas – cooking, dining, living areas?  Scott said; "For open plan multi application spaces, its vital to create adequate numbers of zones of light to provide flexibility to suite the applications and time of day or night. For the kitchen itself task lighting require to be available at suitable light levels on separate zones, with further zones of light to enhance the furniture, space, and create a feature to provide an ambient light level. The dining and living areas may require to respond to this to make to the space work as one, or individually. A good  simple lighting scene system can offer the user control to make the space work coherently."