In article , William W. Plummer wrote:
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?

I installed thin fluorescent fixtures up under the cabinets. I leave
one 13 watt unit on 24 hours a day. It works well IF you can find a
pinkish bulb rather than the standard blue "cool white" bulb. The
latter makes meat look black. (I won't go into what GF says about zits
in cool white!)

There are two lines of "T5" (5/8 inch diameter) fluorescent lamps.

The older one is 4, 6, 8 and 13 watts and mainly uses "old tech"
phosphors with color rendering index in the 50's to 60's ("warm white" and
"cool white").
The newer one comes in higher wattages 14 watts or more and usually has
color rendering index 82-85 and the color is usually specified by color
temperature or 1/100 of the color temperature. The usual color
temperatures are 30/3000 ("warm white"), 35/3500 (in my words "semi warm
white" and in my experience most pleasing), and 41/4100 ("cool white").

The newer ones are also more efficient than the older ones because they
are longer and therefore have their electrode losses being a lower
percentage of input power, and also unlike the older 4-13 watt ones are
normally operated from electronic ballasts.

- Don Klipstein )