The manufacturers of some under cabinet lights show them mounted towards the front of the upper cabinet with the fixture facing the splash (wall). We've tried mounting it everywhere and most of the time we put it against the back wall facing forward. This gives a more dramatic grazing of light down over materials like tumbled marble and it covers the counter nicely out to the edge. Mounting it at the back hides all of the wires which may be why many electricians prefer to put it there. Some inspectors and clients do not want to see any exposed cables. Mounting towards the front of the cabinet with the lamps facing backwards gives a more concealed look for the fixtures with less glare if you have low seating nearby with a view of the underside of the cabinets and your fixtures have exposed lamps or lenses without a built-in cut off. We have had clients request that fixtures be moved from the back to the front and then put back where they were once they see the difference so this is a personal preference. I don't believe there is a right answer no matter what the installation instructions show. What look do you want?

There are fixtures with a solid front edge to block direct view of a lamp from a low seated position when the fixture is mounted at the back wall (splash).

Alkco.com is a premium brand with lots of different types of fixtures and options.

Junolightinggroup.com has nice fixtures too.

I used 4" cans in my kitchen, too, and have wished I'd gone with 5" instead. What kind of bulbs are you using, how high are your ceilings, and how far apart are the fixtures spaced in the kitchen?

I don't know what kind of bulbs- anything in particular that would help? The cans are about 3 feet apart and we have 10 foot ceilings. I think we really underlit. would different knid of baffles help- like haze?

Well, er, umm... yeah. I'm neither professional lighting designer nor electrician, but as a lighting design hobbyist I'd say that 4" line-voltage cans are not likely to be a good choice for 10' ceilings except, perhaps, for special purposes such as spotlighting a piece of artwork. If you're stuck with them then the best bulb choice, for the kitchen at least, would probably be a 50 Watt PAR20 halogen flood, which may or may not be what you've already got. Even with those bulbs, you'd only have about 30 footcandles on the countertops. It might be enough for ambient lighting, but not good for tasks like food prep or reading.

The undercabinet lighting probably helps with the counters, anyhow. You might look for ways to cut down on glare, such as using a specular trim like black alzak - especially bright surfaces such as windows, white trims or being able to see a light bulb too easily will make it harder to see. You could get more light by using compact fluorescent bulbs, but the ones bright enough to mess with are also large enough that they'd stick down out of the cans, which may not be terribly attractive.

FWIW, is there any chance they used remodel fixtures rather than new-construction? In other words, were the cans put in place before or after the ceiling was drywalled? I ask because remodel cans would be relatively simple to change out. Switching the cans in the kitchen to 5" would allow you to use a 60W PAR30 bulb, which would give you half again as much ambient light and almost double the light at counter level with only a 20% increase in energy consumption.

I don't know what kind of cans they used. I am including a picture. Thanks for all this discussion- should have done my homework before but I was told that my designer was a light designer. And I was spending so much time researching other things. sigh.

This is not the kitchen ceiling, but it is the same type of can we used thru-out the house. Thanks again.

Hey, I like this sort of discussion. I'm diy-ing my remodel, and figuring out the lighting was the toughest part of the process because it was the part I knew the least about when I started. Now that I've kinda figured out what I'm talking about, I feel like an evangelist of some sort.

Those are new construction cans, which are not so easy to change. Depending on how strongly you feel about this problem, your budget and your tolerance for more dusty chaos, you might consider redoing just the ones in the kitchen, and adding some supplemental sources like floor and table lamps in the rest of the house. It would mean re-drywalling the kitchen ceiling.

Sorry I don't have happier thoughts to start off the new year. On the bright side, it doesn't sound like you're under a lot of pressure to decide anything quickly.

Jon, there is some time pressure, as we are trying to finish up home -we are 12 weeks overdue as it is. I would like to have any sheetrock work done before, not after we move in. Sigh. We have some track lighting still to go in, but because of location I am not sure it will solve the problem. An, of course, I am not sure that we should install the track if we are going to dismantle ceiling.
Below, I have included the link to what I believe are our u/c lights.

Here is a link that might be useful: Counter Attack

Re-drywalling a ceiling isn't a huge deal, though since your cabinets are already in place they'd have to be especially careful not to damage things. If the existing lights are already positioned well then my guess is that they could use the existing wiring and just replace the fixtures.

Since you haven't done a lot of lighting research, I'll try to boil down a few issues.

5" cans will allow you to use sufficiently bright bulbs, but the choice of trims for 5" cans is generally smaller. 6" cans are more common, so more trims are available for them.

Having looked at the specs for a lot of bulbs, I notice that lower wattage bulbs (within a given type) often produce less light per watt than higher-wattage bulbs. Similarly, physically smaller bulbs produce less light per watt than bigger ones. For example, a 50W PAR20 lamp (what you're currently limited to) produces 550 lumens. A physically larger PAR30 of the same wattage produces 660 lumens; a 60W PAR30 produces 860 lumens, and a 75W PAR30 produces 1130 lumens. Larger cans allow you to use larger, brighter, more efficient bulbs.

Halogen bulbs last twice as long (or more) than non-halogen incandescents, more than offsetting their slightly higher initial price.

For your kitchen, with fixtures spaced 36" apart, I'd suggest you try using 60PAR30/CAP/SPL/NFL25 lamps.

Good luck!

Jon,
As you may have read on my other thread, a slitherer of an electrician was in my attic. It seems he will be able to add one can without ripping down my ceiling. Someone, one of the elctricians, suggested that I switch to haze "baffles" (?) and that that might help the situation. Before I spend any money on new baffles I would like to know if that is correct or just baloney. Building has led me to becoming a cynic.
Another question is would LED's produce more and better u/c light without heat than those Counter Attack fixtures I mentioned.
I can't thank you enough for all of the education and assitance I have gotten on this forum. I just wish this forum had existed when I embarked on this very, very long voyage.

The slithering electrician is quite an image. Short of some Harry Potter-esque shape shifting I'm not sure what they're doing, but it probably doesn't matter.

I don't know that one can is likely to make the sort of difference you're looking for. Would it be feasible for you to post a kitchen floorplan showing cabinet and lighting positioning?

I don't have enough expertise to say for sure what the haze trims will do for you, but it seems unlikely that they'll make a huge difference. If you haven't bought trims yet then you've probably just got bulbs hanging in white cans, and those white cans aren't going to be wasting any great amount of light. As things are now you probably notice that the light bouncing off the white insides of the can is very bright compared to almost anything else in the room. Think about how challenging it is to photograph something indoors if there's a sunny window in the picture -- the camera adjusts for the bright window, so you get a lovely picture of the view out the window but everything inside the room looks to be in shadow because it's underexposed. Glare from light-colored trims or the white insides of the untrimmed cans can cause a similar effect with your eyes. More than anything else, what haze (I'm assuming this is a specular/alzak sort) trims can do is reduce that glare so your eyes can make better use of the light that's already there. If you notice, while standing back and looking into the room, that the spots on the ceiling are uncomfortably bright, then good trims can help with that. If the room seems dim even when the light fixtures aren't in your field of vision, I doubt the trims can do much about that.

I have no direct experience with LED lighting, but the gist I get from what I've read is that the rapidly developing technology is still more suited to early-adopter types and may not be all it's cracked up to for most people's tastes. Ramses_2, over on the kitchen forum, just posted about her new LED UC lights and says she likes them.

Slitherer- person creeping between very narrow spaces (joists?) on one's stomach. LOL. Thanks Jon

Update. My builder just fired our electrician including the "slitherer." All the walk-thrus that were done in the last week regarding problems have to be done again. Sigh. But I hope the new guys will actually show up. x your fingers for me.

jillypie, where is your designer/lighting designer during all of this?

Always on vacation, busy, whatever.

Jillypie, we already had to have one of our fixtures replaced (CSL). It was overheating and also wouldn't come on for hours. Last night DH got it to come on and after 10 minutes was off. Fortunately, the place I bought mine from has a one year warranty and they sent out their electrician. He figured out that it was the fixture itself. I am telling you this thing got hotter than a halogen fixture!

The other issue with the u/c lights is the plug mold. The electricians said that if I put the plugmold behind the u/c lights it would be hot to reach the plugs, but I think that the farther back the plugmold goes the less conspicuous the appliance cords would be(?) Has anybody mounted u/c lighting mid cabinet?

I wish this thread had been posted prior to my own lighting decisions. There is probably hope for your sitation as follows: My developer had installed 4' cans too which quickly became a problem because with dark cabinets the room and countertops were never light enough.

I had a contractor install the undercounter lights as suggested and the lighting level significantly increased. I'm lucky that I install a chimmey type vent which allows a lot of light over the stove. The UC lights (in back) are great as they highlight the backsplash which while only painted now will be grand when covered with tile. I had one "unit" (2 or 3 lights) installed under each cabinet. But the saving grace for me is when I added Tech Monorail lighting to the kitchen. I have 5 heads, two at 35 watts over the island counter and three at 50 watts which I aim toward the cabinets, or toward the walls. They are on a 10 foot rail. The room is now aglow with lights. Because everything is on dimmers (UC/overhead cans/monorail) I now have total control of the mood and level of light. I now rarely have on the overhead light (except over the sink) and the undercounter and monorail serves most of my lighting needs. So I would spend time thinking about your "track" choices as it may solve your problems. The variety of choices for monorails is amazing...much more than tracks. www.techlighting.com expensive but worth every penny.

btw...I did change the bulbs in the 4" cans to the 50 watt PAR 20 mentioned which increased the light level a bit and they seem to have a "whiter" look. good luck