My kitchen ceiling was damaged a while ago by various water leaks. I'm
going to fix it very soon, and thought I should take the opportunity to
sort out the lighting while I can still run the cables.

The current arrangement is a single 3-spot fitting in the centre of the
room. This forces you to work in your own shadow at every single
worktop, even the one that projects out into the middle.

Here's a picture of the room at present:
http://www.verdonet.org.uk/stuff/kitchen.jpg . It's taken from the
doorway; the worktop bottom right is the one that sticks into the middle
of the room, the brown line down the right edge of the picture is the
side of a cupboard that's above it, on the wall opposite the main run of
cupboards. The cooker is in the rightmost corner (not visible).

I'll be having the ceiling plastered smooth, and I'll be painting it
white. So I quite like the idea of having some fluorescent tubes on top
of the wall units in the picture, reflecting their light off the
ceiling. My concern is that the distance between cupboard top and
ceiling is not massive - is the light likely to spread properly across
the room, or just be lighting up the edge above the cupboards?

I'd also fit a downlighter above the sticking-out worktop, and above the
sink - the two main places where you're currently in your own shadow.
I'd like to do the same for the cooker, but it has a big stainless hood
above it and with someone stood in front I don't think there's anywhere
to aim the light in. The hood does have a small light in so it's not
vital. Finally, I'd put small strips under the cupboards to light up the
main run of worktop.

Does all this seem reasonable? I have no experience on which to judge
light levels - am I likely to be massively over- or under-lighting the room?

How would one typically wire cupboard-top fluoro tubes? An FCU on the
wall and then flex to the tube holder sitting on the cupboard?

What sort of tube power should I pick? And what sort of technology for
the downlighters?

Any other advice?

Cheers,

Pete