Kitchen Recessed Lights & Under-Cabinet LED

This kitchen lighting job combined two things that almost every kitchen remodel needs but often gets done halfway: proper recessed ceiling lighting and under-cabinet LED strips that actually illuminate the work surface.

The recessed lights are laid out across the ceiling to give even coverage without a hot spot over the sink or a dark corner near the stove. Placement matters — fixtures that are too close to the cabinets create shadows on the countertop, and fixtures that are too far apart leave gaps. The layout here works with the cabinet run on three walls.

The under-cabinet LED strips run the full length of the upper cabinets and are wired into switched circuits — not plug-in tape lights that drape over a power strip. Hard-wired under-cabinet lighting sits flush to the cabinet underside, stays out of sight, and can be controlled with the rest of the kitchen lights. The warm-tone strips bring out the color in the dark wood cabinets and make the stone-look backsplash pop.

Under-cabinet lighting is one of the higher-impact upgrades in a kitchen for the amount of work involved. If you're mid-remodel and the cabinets are already off the wall, it's the right time to rough in the wiring. Retrofitting after the fact means drilling through finished cabinets and fishing wire through finished walls.