Having a just kitchen is boring. What if you can turn your kitchen into a modern kitchen? Well, you know there are best kitchen islands and modern kitchen lightings that helps you to turn your kitchen into a modern kitchen. You might be wondering how to light a kitchen effectively so that your kitchen lights up in every corner of your kitchen.

If you are looking for how to light kitchen, then you are in the right place. This post will guide you thoroughly in identifying which type of lighting is best for your kitchen along with how you can light a kitchen so that your kitchen looks modern.

Lighting a kitchen is not an easy task especially, when there are different types of kitchen lighting, as they will offer different types of lighting application in your kitchen. So, choosing the right kitchen lighting must be focused on your needs and requirements that you are looking in your kitchen with respect to lighting.

The kitchen lighting involves lighting your kitchen island, kitchen cabinets, under kitchen cabinets, kitchen roof lighting and so on. Each lighting offers great looks to your kitchen in unique way.

There is no doubt that your kitchen is the heart of your beautiful home. The kitchen is the place where we cook food for our families and family members, host parties, start creating YouTube videos, teach children to their homework and so on. For every activity that you do in your kitchen you need a different kind of lighting setup such as task lighting, pendant lighting, accent lighting, spot lighting, ambient lighting, recessed lighting, general lighting and so on.

When you are planning for a kitchen lighting, always think that you are adding ingredients for preparing a delicious food. This means, you must start with task lighting and focus on the workspace area for the directional focused beam for better lighting illumination.

Next you can add accent lighting for visual interest and then you can add general lightings to create the right mood that you want in your kitchen. To make the perfect lighting for your kitchen you make use of dimmer switches and controllers to setup the perfect kitchen lighting.

Task lightings are those lights that focuses on a specific workspace area to provide a targeted illumination for completing your tasks that you have planned in your kitchen or any other room.

To install task lighting for kitchen you need to divide your kitchen space into the work areas that you are going to perform every day. Each area should be divided by considering the fact that you have also installed cabinets, dishwashers, countertops, gangways or pathways, sink, kitchen island and so on. Depending on the partition you can install the right task lighting at the required area.

Task lighting are best in providing increased light for a specific tasks and tasks that require accuracy in your kitchen or any other room. The task lighting performs better when you already have some ambient light. Task lighting is perfect when you want to highlight the areas that have small objects or objects of low contrast.

The task lights are perfect for chopping vegetables in the kitchen, which is perfect for creating YouTube videos.

Whenever you come to home from outside the first thing you will do is to go the kitchen, turn on the kitchen lights and open the fridge. You will be pleased to see that the lights inside the fridge as they help in finding the right item from fridge easily.

What if, if you have the same lighting inside your cabinets too? Having kitchen cabinets lighting helps in finding the exact item or ingredient for preparing your food easily. Not only that, the kitchen cabinet lightings also help in lighting only the cabinet not the entire lightings in your kitchen which helps in saving energy too.

The best solution for lighting kitchen cabinet interiors is to install Stick-on Anywhere Portable Little Light or LED Closet Light by LightBiz on the underside of each shelf just few inches from the front of the cabinet. Once installed, the lighting setup in each of the shelf lights up the items inside the kitchen cabinet.

Stick-on Anywhere Portable Little Light

LED Closet Light by LightBiz

Apart from these lights you can also install strip lights alongside for lighting cabinet interiors such as Govee RGB LED Strip Light and Dimmable LED Cabinet Lighting from WOBANE that offers perfect lighting inside cabinets without any shadows so that you can easily see the items inside cabinets.

Additionally, if your kitchen cabinets offers the space for installing directional lights then you can also install directional lights or 45-degree light channels such as or soft light strip with the help of L channel or V channel such as LED Aluminum Channel V-Shape.

If you want to highlight an individual items or those in a series inside the cabinets then you can install LED Puck Lights such as Brilliant Evolution LED Puck Lights that offers a different effect and are perfect and ideal for creating an isolated pool of light. The best part of LED Puck Lights such as STAR-SPANGLED LED Puck Lights is that they are compact in size and can be installed easily and gives your kitchen a modern look.

If you have a glass door cabinet, then you can install DAYBETTER Led Strip Lights or MINGER LED Strip Lights with the help of V-shape channel such as Hunhun V Shape LED Aluminum Channel at the corners of the glass door kitchen cabinets that offers great illumination in and around the glass door kitchen cabinets.

The best way to light your kitchen drawers is to install LED strip lights such as Govee LED Strip Lights perfectly placed inside at the right location into the kitchen drawers. Along with this you can use a switch or a motion sensor along with the LED light strips such that the lights will turn on when the drawers are opened and are turned off automatically when the drawers are closed.

The kitchen countertops are considered to be one of the most important areas where all the important work takes place. The countertops are best when are illuminated efficiently. So, the best way to light up the kitchen countertops is to install the undercabinet lighting. You can use Brilliant Evolution LED Under Cabinet Lighting or Under Cabinet LED Lighting Kit by WOBANE that offers great kitchen lighting performance on countertops.

Most of the kitchen countertops comes with shiny surfaces such as granite or marble. For such cases you need a diffused light source such as a light channel rather than a bare LED soft strip so that the diffused light source can avoid the reflected glare.

For this you can install the light channel facing down that offers better illumination. If you want to install a LED soft strips, then you can do so by installing a L channel or V-shape channel that holds the LED light strips at an angle when installed on the corner.

You can also install LED Puck Lights such as STAR-SPANGLED Tap Light Push LED Lights or Brilliant Evolution LED Puck Lights with the help of L Shape 4-Pin LED Connectors or StarlandLed V-Shape LED Aluminum Channel installed at a 45-degree angle helps to better illuminate the kitchen countertop.

You can also install these L-shaped LED connectors to the wall intersecting with kitchen cabinets at top of countertops at an angle of 45-degree that offers perfect illumination on kitchen countertops.

When the kitchen countertop surface is matte finish then you can install LED Puck Lights or Dot Lights such as Starxing Wireless Led Puck Lights or Dream Master Puck/Dot Lights for kitchen undercabinet lighting.

The best way to have high performance illumination is to install them equally spread at measured lengths. These puck lights can be installed at a 90-degree angle placed at equal distances of 10 inches or 20 inches. This way the illumination will overlap on each other and generate great illumination.

Before you choose any type of kitchen lighting, you must also understand about the brightness of lighting that the different types of lights that can offer. If you find a kitchen lighting that is beautiful and is fascinating on eyes that doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect fit for lighting your kitchen.

The reason for this is very simple, when you choose a kitchen lighting, you must also ensure that it is offering the required and sufficient illumination along with higher brightness so that it can easily light up the whole kitchen or the required area of kitchen. Thus it is important to know how much should be the brightness of kitchen lighting. Let us understand in detail the lighting brightness.

Understanding Brightness For Kitchen Lighting:

When you choose any lighting for your kitchen don’t just go by the name of wattage that it offers because that shows how much energy that is being used by the bulb or the light source. Rather, you must think about the fact that how much the light that is being produced.

The amount of light being produced by a bulb or any light source is measured in lumens and footcandles. Lumens is nothing but the amount of light produced by a light source. Do remember that the amount of footcandles needed on countertops depends on the age of the occupants.

As we grow older, the lenses of our eyes become yellow and much denser that affects how much light that we can able to see with our eyes. Generically, for people with ages less than 50 years can go with 50 footcandles and the people with more than 50 years can go with 100 footcandles or even more.

However, when you want to select a bulb in terms of watt, then the people with age more than 50 years should go for 5-watt light channel to light your kitchen countertops. And people with age less than 50 years can go with a 2.5 watt light channel for your kitchen countertops.

No matter how best kitchen island that you have, in order to light your kitchen island, you need to install a targeted task lighting as kitchen island is the area where you do all the food preparation and other important tasks too. Once you have successfully installed task lighting then you can decorate the kitchen island with pendant lights.

The best way to light your kitchen island is to make use of recessed lights or adjustable accent heads so that you can efficiently light the task areas on the kitchen island according to your needs. Then the pendant lights can be installed to decorate the kitchen island.

For this, the best way to light your kitchen island is to install monorail lighting. This is because the monorail lighting offers best illumination and you can bend the rail however you would like to have to get better lighting performance.

For kitchen island lighting, the Catalina Lighting 21904-000 is the best monorail lighting. Apart from this lighting you can also choose anyone of the following kitchen island lightings:

• LED Pro Track Salazar Brushed Nickel S-Wave Track Light
  
• DLLT 4-Light Track Lighting Fixtures-Adjustable Directional Spotlight Ceiling
  
• VAXCEL Milano 12 ft. Satin Nickel Monorail Track Lighting Kit
  
• Direct-Lighting 4 Light Adjustable Track Light
  
• Globe Electric 59351 Payton 6-Light Foldable Track Lighting
  
• DLLT 6-Light Track Lighting Fixtures Swing Arm
  

The best part of monorail lighting system is that, you can install both accent heads as well as pendant lights on the same rail. The pendant lights offer a decorative look over the kitchen island and the accent heads provide the directional task lighting. If you want to have a proper lighting control, you can install 2-circuit monorail by wiring the heads and pendants on separate dimmer switches.

If you want to have a lighter look or cleaner look over the kitchen island, then a flexible and unique alternative to track lighting called the kable lighting works perfectly in your kitchen with high ceilings and gives the space an airy feel. It beautifully illuminates your entire kitchen giving the kitchen a modern look.

The best kable light for your kitchen island is the 4-Light Pendant Ceiling Fixture with LED Lighting Kit that offers amazing kitchen lighting over your kitchen island. This kable lighting also allows you the option of flexibility of adjustable accents with pendants. Apart from this you can also try these below kable lighting for your kitchen:

• Hykolity 5-Light Pendant Ceiling Fixture
  
• HAIXIANG Kitchen Island Dining Room Light Pendant Light Fixtures
• PARTPHONER Pendant Light Fixtures
• MOTINI Cylinder Pendant Light Clear
• PERMO Vintage Rustic Industrial 3-Lights Kitchen Island Chandelier

How can you forget lighting your kitchen sink after you have already lighten up your kitchen cabinets, drawers, counters, and so on? Sink is also an important area in your kitchen that needs sufficient lighting as you will be cleaning all of your dishes rather than using a countertop dishwasher. Not only that, the sink also helps in cleaning your vegetables, fruits and so on.

The best spot light that you can install over your kitchen sink is the TOPELE JSL-03W LED Flood Light that offers more than enough lighting all over the sink offering you the best lighting so that you can easily wash your dishes. Apart from this you can also install the below spot lights over your kitchen sink:

• Aisilan Ceiling Spotlight Rotating Lamp LED Ceiling Light
  
• Catalina Lighting 18775-012 Modern Multipurpose Spotlight Desk
  
• Westinghouse Lighting 6345600 One-Light Mini Pendant
  
• WAC Lighting, Solo LED Energy Star Monopoint

Another option is to install a wall spot light from RL to make sure that your dishes are cleaned of thoroughly when you are cleaning. This helps the spot light to be moved according to your directions and can be focused on the kitchen sink work area. Here are few more options that you can try:

• RL Wall Spot Light Plug-in Directional

Another way of lighting your kitchen is to use kitchen accent lighting. These kitchen lightings will help in highlighting any particular area of your kitchen or any architectural details such as artwork or paintings that requires area of attention and has area of interest.

The standard kitchen accent lightings that are installed in the kitchen must have a standard ratio of 3:1, meaning the illumination should be three times brighter than that of the surrounding light in the kitchen so that it can highlight and standout in the kitchen. You can increase this ratio to 5:1 when the area of interest to be highlighted is much more valuable and is eye catching.

To highlight any area of your kitchen you can install Solar Deck Lights from SUNFACE that offers amazing eye-catching kitchen lighting that helps to stand out the area that you want. Apart from this you can also try out these below kitchen accent lights:

• Lifeholder Table Lamp
  
• HFCDL Small Spotlight Battery Operated Accent Light
• LUXSWAY Wireless Picture Frame Led Lighting
• Magictec Solar Spotlights
• Balhvit Glass Solar Lights

The toe kick lightings are best for lighting under kitchen cabinets or lighting the lower space of cabinets in your kitchen. The best way to accent your kitchen is to install toe kitchen lighting or strip lighting around the perimeter of the space underneath the lower cabinets or the underneath the kitchen island.

The toe kick lightings offer you a safety in your kitchen by lighting the pathway in your kitchen to easily identify the key kitchen cabinets. You can install Barrina LED T5 Integrated Single Fixture that offers white light underneath the kitchen cabinets. Apart from this there are other toe kitchen lighting options from strip lighting which are listed below:

• Govee Smart LED Strip Lights
• Tenmiro 65.6ft Led Strip Lights
• MYBeauty Light LED Strip Lights White
• DAYBETTER Led Strip Lights 100ft
• DAYBETTER 32.8ft 10m Led Strip Lights
• DAYBETTER Led Strip Lights 32.8ft 5050 RGB 300 LEDs Color Changing Lights Strip
• Govee LED Strip Lights (32.8FT)
• Govee Smart LED Strip Lights (16.4ft)
• ViLSOM 40FT Led Strip Lights

Lighting your kitchen above your kitchen cabinets will help in adding both accent as well as general lighting to your modern kitchen. This can be achieved by installing a light channel or a soft strip above your kitchen cabinets. This will help in proving up lighting to your kitchen.

Tenmiro Led Lights can you help you achieve the same. These are LED light strips that can be installed above kitchen cabinets. They are smart control LED strip lighting which offers RGB light control through a remote control or an app control which is perfect for kitchen decoration.

The accent lighting for installing inside kitchen cabinets comes in handy when you have glass cabinets or display shelves inside your kitchen. For this type of lightings, the puck and dot lights are perfect for accenting display pieces or any key kitchen items within your kitchen.

You can try Cadrim puck lights which are LED puck lightings that are battery powered and comes with a dimmable effect. These can be strategically placed inside the kitchen cabinets at an angle as required to get the most accent lighting performance.

Art lightings are required when you have artworks around your kitchen walls. The best part is that, there are plenty of lighting options that you can choose to lighten your art works. For best art work lighting results on kitchen walls, you can either use accent heads mounted to the ceiling or you can use a track lighting placed at a 30-degree angle for perfect lighting.

For this you can go ahead and use Dinglilighting DLLT track lighting is the best for decorating your art works on kitchen walls. This lighting can be installed on wall mount ceiling that is perfect for decorations. It comes with an adjustable head and acts as a perfect decorative lamp. You can easily adjust the angle of the lamps to focus on the art work or kitchen wall.

Once you have installed all of your task and accent lighting in your kitchen, it’s time to install more additional lighting to fill in the rest of the space in your kitchen. For this types of lighting, you can choose to install recessed lighting, a chandelier and/or decorative pendant lighting is more than enough for perfect illumination in the kitchen.

These will help increasing the decoration of your kitchen and acts as decorative fixtures which can be used to personalize your kitchen lighting according to your needs. General lighting and ambient lighting can be combined with perfect design and installations will help you increase the look and feel of your kitchen.

Here are the types of lighting that you can choose for general lighting and ambient lighting of your kitchen:

1. Recessed lighting
2. Flush mounts
3. Chandeliers and kitchen pendant lighting
4. Linear suspensions

If you are thinking to install general kitchen lighting, then the recessed lighting is the best and most preferred general lighting types. They can easily fill in the gaps for general kitchen lighting and can be chosen depending on the beam spread and the space measurements of your kitchen.

Say for an example, if you have an eight-foot ceiling and a kitchen island of four-foot-wide, then you might be needing a recessed light with a beam spread to match the same. However, in order to avoid the direct reflected glares on the shiny countertops, you can avoid the direct down lights where in cross-illumination can be adopted.

For this type of lighting, the BBOUNDER retrofit recessed lighting are perfect choice. They are baffle trim can light and offers dimmable lights for your kitchen. These can be installed on to your ceiling easily and are best when it comes to dimmable recessed lighting. They offers 950 LM lighting with colors 2700K to 6000K. They come in a set of 12 and are of 5/6 inch LED retrofit recessed lights.

Apart from these you can also choose from the below options from recessed lighting types:

• Amico 12 pack 6 inch 5CCT ultra-thin LED recessed lights
• Sunco lighting 6 inch ultra-thin LED recessed ceiling lights
• Ensenior 12 pack 6 inch ultra-thin LED recessed light with junction box

If you are not interested in recessed lights for general lighting and looking for alternatives, then the flush mount lightings are the ones which you can go for. These ceiling flush mounts offers decorative ambient lighting in your kitchen.

Usually the flush mount ceiling lights are semi-flush mount lights which projects up to 18 inches from the ceiling top. The semi-flush ceiling lights takes up the perfect place for a decorative chandelier and can add high decorative statements throughout the kitchen especially when you have lower ceilings.

One such semi flush mount ceiling light you can go for is the MAXvolador industrial semi flush mount ceiling light which come with a clear glass pendant lamp shade which can replace the requirements of a chandeliers in your kitchen. They can also act as a farmhouse lighting for porch hallway kitchen and offers vintage looks when hung from ceiling.

Apart from these you can also choose from the below options from semi flush lighting types:

• Drosbey 36W LED ceiling light fixture
• FOLKSMATE 3-light semi flush mount ceiling light fixture
• DLLT 3-light semi flush mount ceiling light fixture

When it comes to decorating a kitchen or making the kitchen a farmhouse kitchen, the pendant kitchen lighting are the most popular types of kitchen lighting ideas. Since, the pendant lights and chandeliers are available in multiple options, you can choose from either glass, fabric, metal, concrete, or crystal, and so on.

Chandeliers and pendant kitchen lighting are perfect over kitchen islands. If you have an 8-foot kitchen island, then you can install three small to mid-size pendants. Another option you can try too is to go for two very large sized pendants over an 8-foot kitchen island. However, if you have a 12-foot kitchen island, then you can install five small to mid-sized pendants, or else you can install three large size pendants.

One such pendant kitchen lighting that you could try is the Frideko glass pendant light which is not looks modern but it is also perfect for kitchen island. This light fixture comes with a clear glass globe design which can be installed on your kitchen ceiling. You can install either two pendant lights on a four-seat kitchen island or three to four pendant lights on a six seater kitchen island.

However, you can also have other options of pendant kitchen lights from below:

• DLLT industrial pendant light fixture
• SGLfarmty 1 pack pendant lighting for kitchen island
• KDK Lighting pendant light black farmhouse lighting
• Esfos pendant ceiling light fixture

The best part of pendant kitchen lighting is that it comes with a wide variety of sizes and options which you can choose depending upon your requirements. It is always good to have multiple-light pendants or multiple pendants looks amazing over the kitchen islands.

Apart from pendant kitchen lights, you can also go for chandelier kitchen lights which can bring in great looks to your kitchen when installed right at the center of your kitchen or over your kitchen island. One such chandelier kitchen lighting that you can try is, TMAFON luxury crystal chandeliers for dining room, which is made up of crystals and can be installed over the kitchen islands.

Apart from this, you can also tryout other options among chandeliers:

• Meelighting crystal chrome chandelier
• Siljoy modern rectangle crystal chandelier lighting

When it comes to renovating a kitchen is to choose a linear suspension kitchen lights which will offer great looks and helps to turn your kitchen into a modern kitchen. Linear suspensions can both help in decorative as well as functional purposes, which can be considered as the best alternatives to chandeliers and pendant lights.

One such linear suspension light that you can do is, Tubicen linear LED pendant light which offers a 25-watt dimmable kitchen island lighting. It comes with a modern aluminum black linear suspension, which can be hung on to kitchen ceiling. The height of the cables can be adjusted depending upon your needs which is perfect for kitchen island. Apart from this, you can go for other linear suspension lightings. Here are some of them which you can try today:

• Hykolity 8 feet linkable LED linear light
• Zicbol kitchen island pendant lighting

When you are thinking of how to light a kitchen, then there are plenty of kitchen lightings that you can try today. We have listed such lightings that you can try in your kitchen and make your kitchen look modern. The best part is that, the kitchen lightings listed here are perfect for any kitchen which you want to turn it into a modern kitchen.