In article ,
John Flatley wrote:
Chris,

What type of lighting did you install?

It the past, I've tried the halogen 'hockey pucks' and felt they put off too
much heat. I've tried Xenon 'hockey pucks' and 'light rope' and was
disappointed.

We had GE Premium No hum fluorescent lights installed with our new kitchen
cabinets installed last week. 2 13" under the cabinets and a 24" over the
sink. This setup provides accent lighting but it isn't enough for task
lighting. The Corian counter top and the Corian on the wall under the
cabinets has a light grey background. The Corian does not produce any
glare. Just the opposite. The light grey seem to absorb the light.

We are still struggling to find a way to improve the task lighting. Any
thoughts or suggestions from you or the group would be appreciated.


Couple of suggestions --
1) replace the "warm white" bulbs with cool white ones, or 'daylight white'
if you can find 'em. They are somewhat higher output, than the warm
white ones. In addition, the human eye is more sensitive to the 'bluer'
colors, vs the 'reddish' ones.
2) if you look hard, you can find under-cabinet fixtures with two
_parallel_ bulbs. Not surprisingly, these put out significantly
more light than single-row fixtures.

Carefully rubber-cementing a sheet of tin-foil (shiny side towards the
bulbs to the inside of the fixture will increase the apparent light
output. (a piece of mirror is the 'ultimate' for this, but it's usually
only a few percentage points better than any kind of 'bright polished'
metal. And tin-foil runs away with the 'budget' honors in that class )

If the fixture is truly 'out of sight', simply _leave_off_ the plastic
'diffuser' that covers the bulbs.

Also, a coat of _bright_white_ paint on the bottom of the cabinetry will
make a surprising difference.


A secret for getting a durable 'bright' white -- add just at pinch of
_black_ tint to it. With the typical custom-tinting systems (ones that
generally use multiples of '4 units' of a given tint, per gallon of paint)
doing up a gallon with the full quantity of 'white', and then adding _two_
'units' of black, works well.

The painting contractor that I learned this from, explained it thusly:

"We add a little bit of black,
to make it look blue,
so it won't turn yellow."


It's impressive how well it works.