apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Deborah -

My kitchen is almost the same - LOW ceilings, awful flourescent tubes in panels - so I feel your pain! We are also trying to figure out what to do - thanks for posting this question.

I replaced a flourescent box with recessed lighting and then installed puck lights under my cabinets for counter task lighting. It has made an incredible difference. My only advice is to have a real electrician handle the work--in our old place we had the handyman do it and they all blew out within a month.

Mirrored backsplash and small lamp for countertop.

Do you know how long I stared at that first photo? I was thinking, those look like French doors to the outside, those look like recessed lights in the soffit, I don't see any fluorescent light. Then, I paged down to realize that was not actually the kitchen.

Damn! Again! The other two are not pictures of the kitchen either! I was thinking, "am I crazy! that window is letting in natural light!

Recessed lights, yes! Under-counter lights, too -- yes!

ALSO, it will help to have:

--Ceiling painted a white with a slight yellowish cast to give a vague subliminal impression of sunlight.

--Non-dark cabinets with a warm paint color. The darker your cabinets, the brighter your paint needs to be so that the cabinets don't loom at you. If your cabinets are very pale, you can go with a very pale paint, as long as the color makes you think of sunlight rather than of a cloudy day.

--Shiniest counters and backsplash you can stand. I don't know if I could live through keeping a mirrored backsplash pristinely unspotted, but any shine level helps.

--Mirrors wherever you can put one without having to wipe it constantly. If you hate mirrors, anything shiny that reflects light is good: glass, metal, shiny ceramics are all great.

--Darkest area on the floors, not the counters or appliances. Black appliances absorb light like a black hole, and dark counters create a line of darkness. If your color scheme gets lighter as you move upward, the ceiling should seem a tiny bit higher. Your floors don't need to be dark-dark -- just the darkest major surface in the room.

--Be wary of going too formal. I'm not saying to cover the walls with dancing fruit or mushrooms, but edging toward your own personal definition of lightheartedness will subliminally convince people that the room must be filled with cheery sunshine.

My parents had one of those florescent boxes; they removed all the florescent bulbs and smoothed out the ceiling (like in the "after picture" of the second kitchen) then put a molding around the edge which hid lights which uplit the space - it gave a beautiful indirect light. They combined that general lighting with some recessed lights over the counter for task lighting.

Thank you everyone, this is really helpful. Eliminating clutter with recessed lights is a great idea. And I must say the discussion of having the color scheme get lighter as you go up actually lifted my spirits, just thinking up moving up towards the light.

One more thing -- the kitchen in the top photo? my kitchen is probably not much bigger than the island in that picture!

Cheers, everyone. Someday my kitchen will sparkle.