Your kitchen is one of the most important rooms in your home.
Whether you consider yourself a great home cook or not, you’re going to end up spending many hours per week in your kitchen. If you’ve got kids then it’s going to be double. For that reason, you’ve got to make it a pleasant space to be in.
A lot of kitchen decor and functionality depends on the lighting. If you get the best kitchen lighting available, then you’ll be able to see what you’re doing, which is important, but you’ll also have a more welcoming space.
Today, we’re going to go over some of the best kitchen lighting ideas so that you can brighten up this space that you spend so much time in. It’ll boost your mood, help your cooking, and be more welcoming to your guests.
Functionality Is #1
You have to place the most focus on making the lights work with your kitchen space. Where do you do most of your prepping and cooking? You’ll need optimal lighting in those areas to ensure that you’re not working in the dark.
Take a step back and really look at what you’re working within your kitchen and base your lighting options on how you can maximize this functionality. Here are a few examples of what to think about:
Task Lighting
Your countertops are where you’ll be doing a lot of slicing and prepping, so you need good lighting to help yourself out. In addition to your overhead ceiling lighting, which will come in the form of pendants or mount lights, you’ll want something extra mounted underneath your cabinets.
This little bit of extra work that these take to install will all be worth it when you can get your chopping and mixing done with ease. Having lights that cast straight down will prevent shadows that can be quite dangerous when you’re using a sharp knife.
Kitchen Island
Not everyone loves them, but the kitchen island is most often used as an all-purpose area. You can use it as extra space while you’re cooking, you can serve meals on it, and you can even use it as a makeshift dining area for when you’re in a rush.
What type of lighting you illuminate your island with depends on what else you’ve got on the ceiling. Again, assuming that there are already some overhead lights in the kitchen, you can use targeted lighting above the island with a chandelier or a few pendants.
Doing this allows you to use your island as a late-night congregation area without having the whole kitchen lit up. The ability to be selective with lighting is always preferable than handcuffing yourself with just ceiling kitchen lights.
Above The Sink and Stove
The other important areas to strategically place lighting is straight above the kitchen sink and above the stove. You need to be able to see what you’re doing, both while you’re cooking, and while you’re cleaning up.
Most stoves nowadays come with overhead units that contain fans, ventilation, and lighting. If you don’t have one of these, however, you should make sure that there’s apt lighting so you can make the best meals possible.
Lighting above the sink allows you to better get the food, dirt, and debris off of your dishes. Cleaning dishes in the dark often results in having to do the dishes a second time.
Eat-In Dining Areas
If you’ve got an eat-in dining area in your kitchen, you’ll want to be able to illuminate that as well. Overhead pendants and chandeliers are always a good option for ambiance. The functionality comes with having the ability to turn off the other kitchen lights while you’re eating to preserve an ambient mood.
It’s important to have a variety of lighting options in your kitchen, so you effectively take full control of where and when certain areas are lit up.
Living the dream is when you can use the sub-cabinet lights to chop while you set your plates on the chandelier-lit kitchen island. Then, you can turn everything off and just use the light above the eat-in dining area.
The Best Kitchen Lighting Complements Your Style
Once you’ve decided where the lighting is best suited, you can start to think about using it to reflect your personal style. Lighting is a huge part of interior design. Getting the fixtures, finishes, and shades that go with the rest of your kitchen’s motif is really important.
It’s also important to consider the adjacent rooms in your home. Do the fixtures in the kitchen make sense with what you have going on in the dining or living room at the other end of the house? It doesn’t have to match exactly, but going with a similar motif is always advisable.
Bold, decorative kitchen lighting fixtures are all the rage right now. Kitchen islands are among the most popular gathering spaces in most people’s houses and we’re seeing that reflected in many of the artsy chandeliers suspended above them.
Linear suspension lighting is the thing that most people are asking for in 2019, probably because it’s such a versatile way of lighting a room. You can have any number of designs with any number of lights to give you the perfect amount of lighting and a statement piece in the middle of your most important room.
You don’t have to restrict this boldness to your kitchen island, either. Above the dinner table is another popular spot for loud lighting fixtures. Mixed with more subdued oval and square pendants for the ceiling, these can give you a really nice contrast.
Let Your Design Skills Take Over
Now that we’ve given you some things to consider, you can start to inject your kitchen with your own personal touch to and the get the best kitchen lighting possible.
Remember, functionality is the most important thing, so make sure that there are enough lights in the kitchen to be able to do everything you need to. After that, have fun with the interior design part and see what you come up with.
Did you find this article helpful? Come back and visit us again for more on work, lifestyle, technology, and home improvement.