Getting Kitchen Lighting Right

The kitchen is the one room where bad lighting is also a safety problem. The points below are written in the order we would actually raise them on site, because the order usually matters as much as the content — a decision made two steps too late is often no longer a decision, just a repair. The kitchen is the one room where bad lighting is also a safety problem. None of what follows depends on style or budget tier; it applies whether the room is being done on a tight number or a generous one. What changes with budget is the material, not the sequence of decisions. The kitchen is the one room where bad lighting is also a safety problem. Treat each point as a check rather than a rule — the right answer depends on your room, and the value here is in knowing which question to ask before a decision becomes expensive to reverse. This is written from projects rather than from a general principle, which is why it names specific dimensions and specific failure modes rather than staying at the level of advice. Where your own room differs from the assumption behind a point, the point still applies — just adjust the number. Nothing here requires taking our word for it; each point is the kind of thing you can verify yourself on a site visit or ask a contractor to confirm in writing. That verification is usually the difference between advice that gets followed and advice that gets nodded at and ignored. A few of these points contradict what gets repeated as conventional wisdom. Where that happens we say so directly and explain why, because the conventional version is usually true in general and wrong for the specific case it gets applied to.

It is easy to treat this as a minor decision because it does not show up in a rendered image. In practice it is one of the decisions that determines whether the finished room actually works the way it was intended to, independent of how it looks. None of the points below meaningfully change the budget on their own — they change whether the budget you already have is spent on the right things. Getting them right does not cost more; getting them wrong costs a rework later that was never in the original estimate. Most of what follows needs deciding before the trade it depends on starts, not before the project starts — so there is usually more time to get this right than it first appears, provided the decision does not get skipped until that trade is already on site. We raise this early in every project for the same reason it is worth raising here: it is cheap to decide correctly up front and expensive to correct once the trades that depend on it have moved past it.

Light the counter, not the floor

Ceiling downlights put your own shadow on the worktop. Under-cabinet linear light at the front edge of the wall units is what actually lights the prep surface.

Aim for around 500 lux on the work surface

Roughly double what a living room needs. Chopping and reading labels are detail tasks and they need real output.

Light the sink separately

It is usually under a wall unit or in front of a window, and it is where you spend the most time standing still. A dedicated spot or strip there is worth it.

Choose a high colour rendering index

CRI 90 or above. Under low-CRI light you cannot judge whether meat is cooked or vegetables are fresh, which is a genuine problem.

Keep the hood light useful

Most integrated hood lights are weak. If the hob is a main work zone, add a separate light above it rather than relying on the extractor.