Many of my dark deep cabinets would greatly benifit from lighting even
though they do not have glass fronts. My wife has been complaining to me to
install lighting of some kind. As many batteries she goes through using a
falshlight I belevie would be more economical for her to get her wish.

MC
"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Alexander Galkin" wrote:

I am going to build kitchen cabinets and plan to install undercabinet
and
inside cabinet lighting. Can someone advise me about the options? What's
advantage of using low voltage over 120V lighting? If low voltage is a
choice when a transformer is placed? Is transformer quite enough? What
type
of bulbs are the best? What's the usual spacing between bulbs? And
finally
where can I buy good quality undercabinet lighting hardware?

In previous kitchens (in apartments), I've just put in thin fluorescent
fixtures under the cabinets. Better than nothing, but the light isn't
very
good.

When we bought a house, we decided to get high-intensity halogen lighting
(IIRC, http://tinyurl.com/4j4b5) running off normal line voltage. It was
a
little expensive, but the light is wonderful. It comes in strips with
various numbers of bulbs. You can mix and match lengths and end up with
about one bulb every 10 inches or so. We wired ours to wall switches.

The one thing we did wrong was not think about how bulbs would get
changed.
The fixtures we put in are a bit fussy to open up, and since we mounted
them all the way against the back wall, you'll got to be a bit of a
contortionist to change the bulbs. If I were to do it again, I think I'd
mount them up against the front lip of the cabinet.

Our cabinets use face frames, and there's a little bit of frame sticking
down to hide the lighting behind. With the frame-less eurostyle cabinets,
the lights would be more visible, which might affect what you buy (if it's
hidden, it doesn't matter if it's ugly).

Inside lighting? I could see that for a glass-front cabinet display
cabinet, but for kitchen cabinets with solid doors hiding cans of green
beans and boxes of pasta? Interior lighting for something like that seems
like overkill. But definately go with the under-counter lights; they're
great.

Check out http://www.waclighting.com; they make a lot of this stuff.