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sjcdance

under cabinet lighting

22 days ago

I’m in MA (Boston area) and got a rough estimate of $1300 to update under cabinet lights from the old halogen box style to LED strips. Approx. $500 for materials and $800 for labor. It’s not a very big kitchen, 8 upper cabinets. Just wondering if this is a reasonable price?

Comments (10)

  • 21 days ago

    Get 3 bids to evaluate. Specify everything so it's apples-to-apples.

    Otherwise impossible to know without details. If direct-wire halogen fixtures, where will the the LED transformer go, how many separate runs. Will the tape run across grouped cabinets. Will there be a switch added. Will you have diffusers, what style. Etc. Undercabinet lighting is actually fairly complicated.

  • PRO
    21 days ago

    That's fairly low. Electricians are about $200-$300 an hour for piecework like that.

  • 21 days ago

    Look into diy using the led strips off Amazon with the most emitters per inch in a 3000k or adjustable color temp. You already have switching and power.

  • 20 days ago
    last modified: 20 days ago

    "old halogen box style"

    Please post a picture of the existing lights.

  • 20 days ago

    Here’s some photos of the existing lights

  • PRO
    20 days ago

    Those are in the wrong spot. They need to be at the front, just behind the light rail. So you are going to have some holes to patch. Not the electrician. Patching holes isn't their job.


    You can probably do LED tapes from Inspired LED yourself if you are at all handy. The issue is going to be that you may have individual power supplies to each of those, rather than them all being ganged and run from a single switch. Also, you will need a place for a driver to be located, and it doesn't look like you have quite enough light rail for it's height. It may need to go inside a cabinet, or above a cabinet. Do some measuring yourself from the components off the site, and watch a few of their videos.

  • 20 days ago
    last modified: 20 days ago

    Since your existing lights are hardwired 120-volt fixtures, it might be easiest to replace them with 120-volt, hardwired LED lightbars that could be connected to the existing wires.

    LED strip lights are low voltage (12 or 24 volts) and require a transformer which you'd have to hide inside a cabinet or place elsewhere to power the lights and run wires from the transformer to the LED strips.

    GE White Integrated LED Under Cabinet Light Cync Reveal Smart Color Changing Hardwired


    Feit Electric Hardwire White Dimmable Integrated LED Color Changing CCT Onesync Under Cabinet Light - 14.5" or 20.5" lengths

  • 20 days ago

    Minardi: "Those are in the wrong spot. They need to be at the front, just behind the light rail."

    The GE and Feit under-cabinet lights are 5" deep so I'd expect they'd preform acceptably even if installed against the backsplash as your current lights are.

    "The issue is going to be that you may have individual power supplies...etc."

    Yup. That's the problem with low-voltage LED strip lights.

  • 20 days ago

    The only holes in the cabinet will be 2 screws hold the fixture up. The other hole will be from the whip coming out the wall. These are called direct-wire fixtures as I first stated.

  • PRO
    19 days ago

    Lighting should always be at the front of the cabinet, to light the counter and back to the splash. Lighting right against the rear wall doesn't light the counter well, and gives hot spots under the cabinets. ALL LED lighitng is low voltage. None of it is line voltage. It's just that some fixtures have integrated drivers in them, rather than separate ones. The separate one are not that big, and can usually be easily hidden. It is worth the cost of the electrician as a $300 service call, just to see if he can run all of that on one circuit. My bet is that he can, depending on access.