Oh my gosh
I just posted a lenghty post about our use of crees. I'm not sure where it went. If it doesn't show up I 'll repost. I love my Crees. they are very bright.

I have no idea where my post went. I clicked submit post and the screen that came up was blank. No way to get back to it. I'll try to recap. Love the Crees. Get the correct color spectrum as they have at least two choices. They are quite bright. In our kitchen/family room we have 4 zones - they are placed approximately 4 feet apart in line, but the rows vary somewhat in distance apart. The dimmers aren't great, so I control the brightness by turning on and off zones. I wish that I had one extra control zone in the family room because you could land a plane in the FR with the available light from the crees. If I could turn off every third light in the FR it would be about right - although threre are times when I want all the light possible. Our light sources for the kitchen and family room are the 4 zones of CREEs, 3 pendants, hood light, under cab light and three 4 inch "wall washer" cans in the family room- not cree.

We used the cree's through out the house wherever we added cans, and I am very happy with the led light. The five main observations would be: poor ability to dim light, (I don't care), brighter than regular cans - to me anyway, their 4" cans actually use a 6" housing - don't get fooled- check specs, buy the correct color spectrum- warm white vs blue light, add multiple zones to make dimming options greater. I think you'll really like them.

Did a test with our Cree LR6s and found that the 4 ft spacing was good. We have very high ceilings though so you may not need as many cans nor as close together. The 2700 is the warmer color, the 3500 is the bluer white; these are the 2700s.

This is 12 lights, 14' up at 7pm at night, 22x18 ft kitchen:

This is dimmed as much as possible that same time:

We will have three zones, not including the pendant lights, the undercounter lights and the two low voltage lights over the sink.

I LOVE my Cree LR6 Led's. I have the warm white like firsthouse. BTW, you don't have to replace the can when the bulb burns out, just what goes inside the can. It does have to be wired in - doesn't just screw in like a bulb. And you can use cans that aren't Cree brand. Mine are halo.I wasn't interested in dimmers - don't care about that in a kitchen. My distance apart varies according to where the light is and what the lighting needs are. My island is just 48 inches, so those two lights are fairly close together, maybe just 2 ft apart from center of one to the center of the next. Near the range, one is over each special glass door. I wanted two over the sink, but there was not enough room in the ceiling for two cans and we were all concerned that one would not be enough, so I got the fixture you see with two bulbs. High up isn't lighted, but it provides plenty of light for the sink.

The peninsula has two.

There are two over the coffee bar, one over the pantry, one over microwave, one over frig

Just be aware that soon the cost for LED can bulbs will come down. And those with Crees won't be able to buy other brand bulbs. They'll have to buy Cree bulbs because they are the only ones that fit their set up. Maybe Cree will come down also, I don't know.

We have 3 Cree LED's in our kitchen. We had to use a certain amount of high efficiency lighting to meet code requirements.

They are about 5 1/2 feet apart in the main work area of the kitchen. We have the warmer color and they still seem very bright and white compared to the other incandescent cans throughout the rest of the house. I think the brightness of them is nice for the kitchen.

Although we only have 3, we also have 3 small halogens over our sink, 3 pendants over the island, under-cabinet lighting, breakfast nook chandelier and it is an open concept so there is lighting in the adjacent rooms that puts off light as well. We also have quite a few windows/French doors that let in natural light during the day.

Oh, and we have 8 foot ceilings.

Here is a picture before we were 100% finished. The 3 silver circles on the ceiling above the island are where the pendants go.