Reference photograph: pendants hung over an island bench, with the ceiling fittings set back into the adjoining living space. The pendants carry the task light at the island; the ceiling layer only has to cover circulation.

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Measure book — guide, light and switching

Kitchen lighting: task, ambient and under-bench

A kitchen with one light in the middle of the ceiling is a kitchen where you chop in your own shadow. The fix is almost never a brighter fitting — it is more than one kind of light, aimed at the surfaces people actually work on, and switched so each can be used alone.

This guide sets out the four layers, where each has to land, how colour temperature and dimming behave once the room is finished, and why every position has to be fixed on the drawing before the electrician roughs in at the preparation stage.

How lighting is set at the design stage

Book a measure and quote

Field label — the layers

Four layers, not four fittings — two of them can share a circuit, none of them can share a job.

Four layers, in the order they are decided

Plan the layers in sequence and each one has a smaller job to do. Plan them as a single lighting budget and the ceiling ends up carrying everything.

LAYER ONE Ambient
General ceiling light that lets you walk in, find the fridge and read the room. It does not need to reach the chopping board, and trying to make it do so is what produces glare.

LAYER TWO Task
Light placed over the bench run, the sink and the cooktop, set forward of where you stand so your body is behind the beam rather than under it.

LAYER THREE Under-bench and under-cabinet
A continuous strip fixed to the front underside of the overhead, behind a shadow line or batten so the source is never seen in the splashback. The single most useful 20 watts in the room.

LAYER FOUR Accent
Low-output light inside glazed or open joinery, in a pantry, or washing a textured splashback. Decorative, switched separately, and the first thing to leave out if the budget tightens.

Reference photograph: an L-shaped run lit from one large window, with a pale stone splashback returning the daylight it is given. The leg furthest from the glass is the length that has to be given its own task light.

Where the light has to land

Position one

Over the bench run

Overhead cupboards throw the bench into shade from mid-morning on. Ceiling light set behind the cook makes it worse; the answer is a strip under the overheads plus downlights set roughly 200–300mm forward of the cupboard face.

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Position two

At the sink and cooktop

Both are stood at for long stretches and both are usually under something — a window head, a rangehood, a bulkhead. Rangehood lighting counts as task light for the cooktop; the sink needs its own, centred on the bowl rather than the tap.

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Kitchen Splashbacks

Position three

Inside the joinery

A deep pantry, a corner unit or a glazed overhead is a dark box unless light is built into it. Drivers, switches and cable runs have to be allowed for inside the cabinet at the time it is drawn, not found a home afterwards.

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Field label — colour and control

Colour temperature, dimming and switching

Mixing colour temperatures in one room is the mistake people notice last and dislike most: a warm pendant beside a cool under-bench strip makes the benchtop read grey at one end and yellow at the other. Choose one temperature for the working layers and hold it across every fitting, including the one inside the rangehood.

Then decide how the layers are controlled. Under-bench light should switch on its own, because it is the layer most used at night and the one that makes an empty kitchen look finished. Ambient light is worth dimming; task light rarely is — you want it at full output or off. Put the switches where a hand arrives, which usually means beside the doorway you enter from rather than the one on the drawing.

Finish surfaces change the result too. A gloss splashback and a pale stone bench will return a good deal of what you give them; matt dark joinery and a textured tile will absorb it, and the same fittings will feel half as bright. Settle lighting alongside the finish selections, not after them — see Kitchen Design.

Warm white, around 2700–3000K
Reads soft and domestic. Flatters timber, brass and warm stone; can make cool greys look muddy.

Neutral white, around 3500–4000K
The usual choice for working light. Colours of food and finishes stay close to how they look in daylight.

Cool white, above 4000K
Clinical in a home kitchen at night. Rarely worth it unless the room is genuinely a workshop.

Colour rendering
Ask for a high CRI rating on task and under-bench fittings. It is what keeps raw meat and green vegetables looking like themselves.

Circuits
Ambient, task, under-bench and accent on separate switching wherever the board allows.

Where it falls in the build

Consultation · Measure

Design — every fitting position, circuit and switch plate is fixed here

Quote · Materials · Demolition

Preparation — electrical rough-in, while the walls are open

Cabinetry · Benchtops · Splashback · Finishing · Handover

Two stages apart on paper, one plastered wall apart in practice.

Why the positions are set before rough-in

Lighting is one of the few elements of a kitchen that is installed twice: cable and mounting points go in during preparation, while the walls and ceiling are open, and the fittings themselves arrive near the end. Everything about the first visit depends on decisions made at the design stage — where the overheads finish, how deep the bulkhead is, which side the pantry door swings, whether there is an island and exactly where its centre line sits.

Move a bench run 300mm after rough-in and the downlights that were set forward of the cupboard face are now behind it. Add a strip inside a pantry once the plaster is closed and the cable has to be surface-run or chased back through finished work. Neither is a disaster; both cost more than they would have as a line on a drawing.

This is why lighting is treated as part of the layout rather than a finishing selection. The full sequence is set out in our 12-step process, and the coordination between design, rough-in and the joinery install is part of Complete Kitchen Renovations.

Checklist — before the drawing is signed off

One colour temperature agreed for every working fitting

Downlight centres dimensioned from the cupboard face, not the wall

Under-bench strip shown on its own switch

Driver and cable space allowed inside pantry and glazed units

Pendant heights and island centre line confirmed against the bench

Switch plates placed at the door people actually use

Bring the lighting plan to the measure

We work through lighting positions in Moorabbin and across Highett, Hampton East, Bentleigh, Bentleigh East, Cheltenham, Mentone and Heatherton at the same visit as the measure, so the drawing that goes to quote already carries them.

Keep reading: Kitchen layouts explained · Choosing cabinetry · Storage ideas