The recipe for kitchen lighting

Warmer weather welcomes a new season of family dinners and alfresco dining. However, incorrect placing of lights can make kitchen preparation and presentation more difficult than it needs to be. Justine Hickie from Eurotech Lighting, shares her tips on the perfect lighting for cooking up a storm.

When it comes to kitchens, lighting is typically last on the list of considerations made, and even then, aesthetics often trump practicality. But the placement and the type of lighting you use in a kitchen is really important, for both safety reasons and easier food preparation.

And here’s the best news, you don’t have to re-design your whole kitchen to improve your lighting set-up. It just requires a few swap-outs and additions to what you currently have installed.

The key to great lighting is layering, and in a kitchen you need to have a mix of ambient lighting and task lighting. Examples of ambient lighting would be strip lighting, or under cabinet lighting that provides a warm glow around your kitchen space.

And then of course you also need lighting placed over preparation surfaces (so as to not create shadows and to keep those fingers safe when chopping, slicing and dicing). Task lighting would typically be downlights, or functional pendants hanging at the right height over a bench.

LED lighting is constantly evolving and one of the most exciting (and useful) advances in LED technology is CRI or the Colour Rendering Index. The CRI is a measure of how colour is displayed to the naked eye. High CRI is incredibly handy in spaces where colours could be confused, which of course is rather essential in a food and cooking environment.

High CRI can be visible in any LED lighting, whether that is a bulb (for lamps) or an integrated LED light fixture. In a kitchen space, you’ll want to ideally look for a CRI of 90 plus to get the best clarity and result.

Using pendant task lighting is great for making a stylish impact in your kitchen, while LED lighting can be used to create a relaxing ambience after dinner, mimicking the warmth of candlelight when the pendants are off.

09 818 6039 | eurotechlighting.co.nz