Under Cabinet Lighting And Your Kitchen
Posted by Tom Sanderrs | Filed under Home & Family
Have you ever watched home improvement shows and wondered how the designers can get such neat lighting effects in the rooms they work on? These effects are usually due to the installation of under cabinet lighting. While the name indicates that it is only for placement beneath cabinets, these lights can do so much more. They can be placed anywhere in the house that you need additional lighting or want to add a designer touch.
You also have colored lighting to use in your home. This is often for adding ambient lighting or to show off a particular feature of your home. Having the different colors will depend on the type of light you choose, especially with LED lighting. It is also important to use the same brand since there can be a variation between different brands and could ruin the effect you wanted.
In the kitchen, you can do more than just light up shadowed counter tops. If you want your tile back splash to really pop, try installing some puck, or recessed, lighting with swivels. Angle the lights inward towards the wall. You will notice an immediate improvement in the appearance.
Does your kitchen look and feel small? If there is room between the cabinets and ceiling, add lighting strips to the tops of cabinets. It tricks the eye into believing the ceiling is higher, instantly making the room appear larger. If you are selling your home, this designer trick can be what cinches the sale for you.
How many times have you had problems finding something in your cabinet because it was so dark in the back? While deep cabinets offer you more storage space, it can be difficult to see everything inside the cabinet. Add a little light to the back of the cabinet to solve this problem.
Are you tired of only being able to see the contents of your curio or china cabinet during the day? While you can purchase lighted cabinets, these often cost a lot more than unlighted ones. A better option is to attach LED strips to the undersides of shelves. Strips can also be installed at the back or sides of the cabinet to provide additional lighting.
You can give your home entertainment center a custom look by adding a few swivel lights on the undersides of shelves above pictures and knick knacks. Do you place these items on top of the entertainment center? You have two options. One, install a strip on top of the cabinet. For a more customized look, place swivel lights on top and slide them to the front. Angle them back towards your displayed objects.
As you can see, under cabinet lighting can be used all over the house in a variety of ways. Look around your home to see what areas could benefit from additional lighting. Then visit a store that sells lights to see which would work best for the area. You don’t have to be a designer to add a designer touch to your home.
When deciding which kitchen lighting fixtures might work best for your needs, shop lots of different places. One place that offers go here can be found here.
Tags: cabinet lighting, cabinetry, Home, Home & Family, Home Improvement, home repair, kitchen lighting, kitchen upgrades, under cabinet lighting
An Easy Way To Move Over To LED Lighting
Posted by Siobhan Persson | Filed under Home & Family
Few people can have escaped noticing that conventional incandescent lighting is rapidly being phased out and that the preferred (over Compact Fluorescent Lamps) alternative is LED, which is widely regarded as the way forward to a environmentally friendly, low cost lighting future. The question though is: where to start?
Now you might think that it would just be a matter of swapping every existing incandescent light bulb for an LED equivalent, however I really would suggest that you don’t go down that route. For a start the up-front cost would be quite steep, but perhaps more importantly it would jeopardize the likelihood of a successful outcome.
Getting to grips with LED lighting doesn’t happen overnight - this is a completely different technology to incandescent lighting and requires a bit of getting used to before you can get it just right for your own needs. But stick with it and the end result is superior quality lighting that also happens to save massively on electricity costs.
Sound advice then is to begin with an area that either uses a lot of lighting or has the lighting switched on a lot (or simply somewhere you would like to refurbish anyway). In this way, your chances of seeing a noticeable difference with respect to both light quality and running costs are greatly increased.
Getting off to a successful start this way is important since it provides the encouragement to proceed with further steps towards finally replacing all your incandescent lighting with LED. The room that most people nominate to start with is, unsurprisingly, the kitchen. This usually has many lights that also get used a lot and a kitchen lighting makeover invariably seems to appeal.
The typical modern kitchen often uses quite a number of halogen lamps, either mounted on tracks or recessed into the ceiling. These waste a phenomenal amount of electricity as heat and are simplicity itself to replace with retrofit LED equivalents. Just pull the halogen lamp out and push in an LED rated to produce the same level of light. For GU10 LED bulbs that’s it, but for MR16 low-voltage lamps you should also purchase an LED driver to replace the 12v transformers previously used.
The same idea (straightforward replacement) also applies to lights installed atop, underneath and inside wall cabinets. Alternatively, add some lighting to these areas if none already exists since LED strip and miniature spot lights are simple to fit, being both light in weight and flexible with respect to being cut or connected to suit any configuration. A common technique is to accent plinths and covings, or if fitted to a kick board to pick out the floor.
Three key considerations should be borne in mind with regard to LED lighting.
1. Quality counts. It’s only natural to count the cost but what really counts with LED lighting is quality and the two are mostly related. Cheap products may look like a bargain but they won’t perform as well or produce the savings you should expect (recall that incandescent bulbs cost little to buy but ultimately represent a terrible waste of money when you calculate the true “cost of ownership”). Look out for respected brands such as Sharp’s Zenigata or the Cree Evolux.
2. True cost. Or what is known as TCO (total cost of ownership). Over a period of 50,000 hours a single LED will incur zero replacement costs and cost as much to run as it costs to buy. Over the same span a halogen lamp will need to be replaced at least 25 times and is likely to incur 1,000 times its purchase price in electricity costs. Even if an LED costs 20 times more (and many do) it’s cheaper just on replacement costs alone and orders of magnitude cheaper on electricity costs.
3. Use. The best way to use LED lights is plenty of them with a mix of brightness and colour temperature and position them to reflect off objects and surfaces. LED lights are high intensity and can be quite harsh if you look at them directly, however they don’t yet “carry” as well as incandescent bulbs. Reflected light however does easily fill a space well with warmer, more diffuse tones and at the same time you get sharp accent lighting on the original feature or surface.
For further information check out these articles that look at the subjects of kitchen lighting ideas and kitchen ceiling lighting in greater detail.
Tags: energy, green issues, halogen lighting, Home & Family, Home Improvement, kitchen lighting, led lighting, lighting, low energy lights, money saving, reduce waste, save energy, save money, technology
