Lighting is something so often overlooked and thrown together when renovating. Lighting designers can be hired to design optimal lighting throughout your restaurant, hotel, house and of course at the theatre. While I am by no means a lighting designer, I did try and make considered choices for lighting in the kitchen when working with the builder and electrician.
Our architects had us first thinking about lighting when putting together the finishes document throughout the design process. What kind of lighting did we want where? Spotlights, recessed lighting, pendants? The options are endless and I felt quite out of my depth. After doing some research and with the advice of the architects, we landed with six recessed spotlights in the kitchen with three pendant lights above the island.
There was a bit of a discussion on placement of the lighting when the build was happening. We very much like to stick to the plan, and our builder likes to go over things on site and make adjustments that way. At first they went and put six spotlights in so they were symmetrical in the room. Having the spotlights symmetrical meant that one row of the spots would be very close to the pendant lights which seemed a bit pointless. Going with symmetry as a general rule of thumb does tend to work, but as a highly functional space, the lighting in the kitchen is so important.
The lighting design we opted for was to have the spotlights over the traffic areas of the kitchen.We already had built in lighting underneath the wall hung cabinets and extractor, so the worktop areas and cooker are covered. We also fitted three pendant lights over the island. The remaining six spotlights then illuminated the walkways throughout the room. All of these lights are dimmable as well.
Lighting design isn't only what type of lighting and placement in a space, but also the kind of light fixture you install is another can of worms. We wanted the recessed spotlights to be as minimal as possible, cue Adolf Loos 'Form Follows Function.' These lights come in all shapes and sizes, but there is no need to have a large bezel around a light that is set right into the ceiling. We found these plaster in down lights online that give a super clean and modern look. We got them on a Black Friday sale, but they're only £8.50 each even at full price - not bad! Only thing is you need to have them fitted before your plasterer comes, so they're not a great option if you already had your ceiling plastered.
The pendant lights we opted for are more decorative according to Adolf Loos' philosophy, but they are still pretty contemporary and minimal. The black rose, cord and shade holder are all black to tie into the black aluminium windows. A simple round clear glass shade is clean and modern. We are still a good few weeks away before we will be back in the house, so we are yet to get the full experience of the new kitchen and lighting design in this room. Watch this space for a full review soon!
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