My perimeter will be cans. Three flush ceiling fixtures will light the island. I would have used pendants, but the ceilings are only 7.5' and I didn't want them hamming down so low.

Taking the out the light sources you mentioned, the only ones left are flush or semi-flush fixtures.

We're giving LED cans a whirl. I believe we have 8 around the perimeter of the kitchen, with xenon over the sink and undercounters. Home Depot was having a green sale and we picked the LEDs up for around $40 a can. Their output seems to be on par (no pun intended) with older cans, though, of course, much "whiter".

We installed the LED's throughout the house, and I'm not quite used to the color temp yet, but anything is better, in my opinion, than flourescents.

I have beams in my kitchen and I put up track lighting under three of the six beams. Each track has 5 halogen spots that can be directed in the desired direction. The track lighting is by Ikea and called Magnesium. You buy the track and the spots separately (see Ikea website). I like this system a lot, it gives a lot of light and is small, so unobtrusive.

HTH, Petra

Here is a link that might be useful: Ikea Magnesium spotlight system

I second buying the home depot cree lights (called ecosmart) that are LED instead of PAR can lights.

In our kitchen we had contrast t3250 mr-16 put in and they are so much brighter than normal can lights. They are much smaller. I'll try and get a picture.

For general illumination, we have three semiflush schoolhouse fixtures down center of the kitchen. (The room is 11'x25'.) They each take one bulb up to 150W, but I think I have 100W bulbs in them and it's enough. We often dim the one in the eating area. (Work surfaces are otherwise lit, with downward-pointed sconces and undercabinet LED strips.)

Here's an old, in-progress photo that shows two out of the three fixtures:

{{gwi:1572194}}

We have undercabinet LED lighting, overhead cans, spot cans over the clean up sink, halogen over the stove, and 3 pendants over the island. We just put the pendants on dimmers this weekend. I find the over head cans to be too bright and intense most of the time. It helps if you can get a lot of natural light in for day time illumination. In the evenings, I find we use the pendants and undercab lighting the most. Rarely do we blast on the overhead cans, but it is nice to have the option if you want it.

I have eight circuits of lighting in mine, which all relate to either tasks, accents or generals. I can/do cook with just the over-sink, under-cabinet, and vent hood lit. The nine general ceiling cans are only on full blast to clean the floor, or in the dead of winter when I need to see some light as bright as the sun ;-)
Casey

Lighting was my big block wall. I asked in the lighting forum and was referred to a showroom where I found a lighting designer whose wife had the same concerns as I did, so for the minimum fee I was able to take advantage of his knowledge. The law here requires that more than half of the total lighting wattage be in high efficiency lighting. As far as I can tell, what this means isn't that people decrease the amount of wattage used. Rather they increase the amount of lighting they put in. Sigh.

I'd say that three quarters of the time I use natural daylight or indirect light bounced off the ceiling. The indirect light is 8 of the high quality, small fluorescent tubes in a square wooden surround in the center of the room. I had the ceiling painted a very pale tint of the medium-dark wall color to give the best reflection without going completely white.

All of the fluorescents in my kitchen are sheathed with theatrical gels to reduce the color temperature to 2700K. That's similar to incandescent, though it's still washy light that doesn't define details as well as incandescent. It's the color of sunshine. As opposed to "daylight", which hurts my eyes.

In the center of this fixture, I have a "skylight" with five more of the same sheathed tubes. It lights up the island and all the area around it.

In the corners of the perimeter are 35w halogens with glass diffusers, plus one more in front of the pantry cabinets. They're recessed cans, but don't have the exposed holes.

There are multicolored LEDs that give an overall balanced color under the cabinets, and a small decorative hanging fixture in the entrance way to the room before it opens up into the kitchen proper.

All of these are on five push button switches with dimmers in the entrance way with the stereo controller. There's an additional switch/dimmer for a further three diffused halogen cans in the butler's pantry. The skylight fixture has an additional on/off switch in the dining room by the kitchen door. The indirects have an additional on/off switch by the patio door. The butler's pantry has an additional on/off switch by the dining room door with a button/dimmer switch for the LEDs over the butler's pantry counter.

There are also two of the diffused halogen cans in the bridge cabinet which also has the HVAC duct over the clean-up sink. The switch is near the sink with the disposer switch (I prefer this to an air switch). They were supposed to be incandescent, but then something happened with the math. I rarely turn them on. Mostly for cleaning up after a big party. There are also the four halogen lights on a continuous dimmer that are part of the hood.

The perimeter and under cabinet lights are vital for baking in the evening. The hood lights make it easy not to worry about any others for the stove. The skylight is usually too bright and needs dimming. There are no shadows on the island with it and the indirects on.

My requirements were to have lots of light, no pools and shadows, and nothing to hurt my eyes, but sufficient that I wouldn't avoid cooking at night. Definitely achieved. You should have seen the circuit plans that were drawn on what was left of the old walls!! Talk about spaghetti!! But it all works perfectly, and I love that if I just want to do a little something in the kitchen I can just turn on the indirects, and I can add in as much as I need at any one time.

At the same time as we did the kitchen, we redid much of my laundry walk-in closet. It just got a standard fluorescent cloud fixture, but also got the sheathes. It looks like morning in there, even late at night!

I think I use all of my lighting as "general lighting" in my kitchen. I might flip 1 or 2 or 3 of the switches that control my overhead cans; I might just turn on my over sink pendants, or my peninsula pendants; I might use any combination of these lights. I personally don't consider any of my lighting either "task" or "general" because that's not the way I really use it...if that makes sense.

SQ

Main source are the under cabinet lights. First switch on in the morning and last off at night. I rarely use the cans, except for the one over the sink. Pendants hang over the raised bar and are generally used for meals.