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amg765

Light my kitchen

11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago

I got great feedback on my backsplash layout question, now I could use some lighting help.

Here is what is there now superimposed on the future floor plan:

The main part of the kitchen is about 13'x8'.

Currently the kitchen has a 1 3-bulb fixture not quite centered on the sink and a bare bulb with a pull chain in the existing closet (which we are opening up into an alcove and filling with tall cabinets). With the brightest LED bulbs we could find it's not dark but there are shadows. There is enought natural light that the light doesn't usually get turned on during the day. There is no under cabinet lighting.

I'd like a pendant over the sink, but what should I do about the overhead lighting? I'd prefer not to have cans. My thoughts were either 3 flush mount LED fixtures spaced down the center of the room, or 2 2-3 bulb semi- flush mount fixtures. The latter may not be to code by themselves because they aren't considered high efficiency lighting (even though we'd be using LED bulbs, I guess if you can stick incandescent bulbs in it doesn't count) Most of the resources I found for figuring out how much light you need are talking about recessed lighting so I'm pretty lost.

For the UCL I'm looking at the flexible strips from Inspired LED with their push button dimmer switch mounted under the cabinet. We have just the 2 upper cabinets on the sink wall. I have 2 questions about this.

1) Where does the outlet and power supply normally go? Behind one of the cabinets and you just cut a hole in the cabinet back? The cabinets go to the ceiling so it can't go on top.

2) Is it better to have a switch for each side of the sink or just one for both?

Does anyone have a good resource explaining what california code is for this stuff? (Other than reading the actual code, which I am doing but the sections on lighting seem particularly obscure ;) )

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