Kitchen Lighting for Home Remodeling Projects in Maryland

Beautiful Lighting Options for Your Rockville Home Remodel

You’ll spend a lot of time with your kitchen designer selecting kitchen cabinets, choosing between granite, Silestone, and other countertops, and deciding which appliances and flooring you would like.

Kitchen lighting might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you picture your new kitchen, but lighting is one of the best ways to make a kitchen stand out.

Kitchen lighting can be more than just functional – it can also be dramatic. Dramatic lighting isn’t just for the stage – it also enhances your new kitchen’s décor and sets its mood.

At Signature Kitchens Additions & Baths, we’ll discuss kitchen lighting with you during the design phase of the kitchen remodeling process. We have dual lighting in some of our displays to demonstrate cool versus warm light, various switches from door-activated to a switch or a motion switch.

Schedule an appointment to discuss your new kitchen with a designer, including how to light it for dramatic effect.

Four Types of Kitchen Lighting To Consider

Our designers have put together short descriptions of the four kinds of lighting we use in our kitchen lighting designs to start giving you ideas of how you may want to light your kitchen.

If you have any questions about kitchen lighting, contact us, and one of our designers will discuss with you what we can do for you and your kitchen.

Ambient Light for Your Kitchen Design

Ambient lighting is just one of four types of strokes for your kitchen canvas. This kind of lighting fills the room and provides the kitchen’s background lighting. Sources of ambient or general lighting can be a series of recessed or surface-mounted light fixtures.

When thinking of kitchen lighting ideas, the key is to recognize that ambient lighting is the backdrop of the rest of the kitchen lighting design and, therefore, should be inconspicuous.

Kitchen Design Includes Task Lighting

Task lighting illuminates the spaces where you do the work of the kitchen: cooking, cleaning, storing, and entertaining. Under-cabinet lighting is especially good for task lighting because it directly illuminates the working area of your counter without shadows getting in the way.

It’s best to run the under-cabinet lighting down the full length of the cabinetry to provide even, balanced lighting. Recessed spotlights that light up specific areas like your sink or oven range are also great examples of task lighting.

Over your kitchen island, on the other hand, you might choose art glass pendant lighting for its high form and function. Task lighting can even be helpful in your cabinets – if you’ve ever spent more time than you’d like to admit looking for that special ingredient in the depths of your shelves, you understand how helpful it can be.

Finally, it’s important to install a separate light switch for task lighting fixtures so they’re not on the same circuit as the ambient lighting. By using multiple switches and dimmers, you can better control the mood and functionality of the room’s lighting.

Accent Lighting in the Kitchen

This is often the most overlooked kind of kitchen lighting, which is unfortunate because it’s the most dramatic. Accent lighting draws attention to particular elements of your kitchen.

You should decide on one or two special features of the room, like a picture, painting, or sentimental object that gives a sense of character to your kitchen. Accent lighting includes above- and interior-cabinet lighting that adds dimension to your kitchen.

Accent interior cabinet lighting, for instance, can take the form of small recessed lights that direct their light down through glass shelving. Another way of creating accent lighting in a cabinet is to use a track of small LED fixtures around the inside of the cabinet’s front. Above-cabinet accent lighting is great for rooms with higher ceilings, especially when decorative items are placed on top.

Decorative Lighting

Contrary to accent lighting, which draws attention to an object or surface, decorative lighting draws attention to itself. The historic epitome of decorative lighting is the chandelier, though chandeliers aren’t often used in kitchens.

The art pendant lighting used earlier as an example of task lighting is also an example of decorative lighting. But decorative lighting’s primary purpose is not attraction, but distraction.

Chandeliers, for example, call your attention and draw your eye to the ceiling. You can use this same principle of decorative lighting in light fixtures over your kitchen island or counters. These decorative light fixtures will draw attention to themselves and away from the clutter that might gather on the surfaces beneath them.

Contact our kitchen designers to learn about our other great kitchen lighting ideas.

Why Choose Signature Kitchens Additions & Baths for Your Rockville Home Remodeling Project?

Our designers have specialized training in kitchen design through NKBA, SEN, or ASID, not only in style and structure but also in function and arrangement. Unlike many kitchen and bath companies, we aren’t a retail store. We are a design, build, and remodeling company, a licensed contractor in Maryland, DC, and Virginia.

Whether you live in DC, Bethesda, Potomac, Olney, Silver Spring, Woodley Park, Adams Morgan, Capitol Hill, or elsewhere in the area, Signature Kitchens Additions & Baths can design a great kitchen, addition, or bath for your home.

We can also develop permit-able drawings, process the plans to permit, move the walls, floors, and ceilings, and install lighting, plumbing, tile, and floor. We can even build the house if you’d like.

Call 301-251-1880 today.