In article ,
"John" writes:
I am still gathering ideas for lighting my kitchen. (I don't want to fit
downlighters in the ceiling due to constraints of joist directions). One
idea is a couple of modern circular fluorescents - another is to make
something like a pane as illustrated in this:

http://www.theexcitinglightingcompany.com/panels.htm

Has anyone done this and got any ideas or tips?

Kitchen lighting is often covered in this newsgroup.
One common recommendation from myself and others is to use
hidden fluorescent lighting on cupboard tops reflecting off
a brilliant white ceiling. This is augmented with task
lighting where required, e.g. under cupboards over worktops.

I've done the lighting in a number of kitchens, and when
possible, I use this scheme. Reasons for not doing so are
cupboards which go right up to the ceiling, or householders
who for some reason don't want that scheme. Frankly, nothing
else comes even close for effectiveness. Unless your kitchen
is just for show and not functional, you need really good
general lighting, and that's very difficult to achieve using
any kind of trendy style lighting, as it's mostly designed
for appearance rather than function.

That doesn't mean you can't have style lighting too, and
many kitchens aren't only used for food preparation, so
I certainly wouldn't suggest ignoring style lighting, which
you can regard as part of the decorations. However, treat it
as something separate from your general purpose lighting, and
make it separately switchable.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]