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Category: Kitchen Lighting

The different types of kitchen lights and when you need them
Choosing kitchen lighting can be overwhelming with so many kitchen light fittings and design options to browse. If you’re in the process of choosing your kitchen lighting design, we’re here to help!

In this guide, we will outline all the different types of kitchen lights you can choose and when and where it’s best to use them to help you find the perfect lights that work for you in your kitchen.

Table of contents
Kitchen ceiling lights

The Italian Collection Lana Single Light Ceiling Pendant in a Chrome Finish With White Glass

Kitchen ceiling lights are the most common and typical way to light your kitchen. If you’re unsure where to start planning your kitchen lighting, ceiling lights are an excellent place to begin. They usually provide general ambient light to the entire room, which is necessary to see and conduct everyday tasks. Here are the different ceiling lights you can choose.

Pendants

The Italian Collection Milk Single Light Ceiling Pendant in White Finish

Pendant lights are a fantastic way to light your kitchen, especially if you have a kitchen island or dining table in your kitchen. Use a pendant light to provide ambient lighting to the whole room by installing it in the middle of the ceiling. Using a pendant light in the centre of the room can also act as a beautiful centrepiece, especially if you opt for an unusual design piece. Or, use it to highlight a feature like a kitchen island or dining table slightly off-centre.

Flush ceiling lights

The Italian Collection Ovalino 8 Light Flush Ceiling Fitting In Chrome Finish With White Glass

Flush ceiling lights are also a great way to illuminate your kitchen, particularly if you have a low ceiling, where a pendant light would be impractical. Many flush ceiling lights can still be beautiful room centrepieces with intricate or stylish designs.

Chandeliers

Dar Lighting Dar Nadria 6 Light Chandelier in Satin Gold Finish

Although not a typical choice for kitchen lighting, if you have a grand traditional kitchen or want to make a bold statement, you could add a chandelier to wow your guests.

Spotlights

The Italian Collection Oby 3 Light LED Spotlight Bar In Matt White And Chrome Finish

Spotlights are an excellent ceiling light option for kitchens due to their bright LED bulbs, focused, directional light and adjustable heads. As your kitchen is a high-activity area, you need sufficient task lighting to do your daily jobs, like cleaning, prepping food and cooking.

Spotlights offer excellent kitchen worktop lighting because you can direct the light beams to where you work most frequently. You can also prevent shadows from forming on your work surfaces by using kitchen spotlights. Choose between single spotlights or multiple, depending on how much and where you need the light.

Downlights

The Italian Collection Mood Square Large Flush Ceiling Fitting in White And Black Finish

Downlights offer many of the same advantages as spotlights. They provide focused, adjustable beams to where you need them most, but they are more discreet than spotlights. Often recessed into the ceiling, downlights offer a minimalist modern look, perfect if you have a contemporary kitchen interior design.

Track lights

Lucide Nigel 1 Circuit Track Spot Light In Black Finish

If you’re looking for a modern, flexible lighting alternative, you can always look at track lighting. To install track lights, you need to install tracks onto the ceiling and then fit your lights. These lights get energy from the tracks, but you can fully adjust and move them, giving you the ultimate freedom to change your lighting design to your heart’s content.

Use track lights over your kitchen table, island or worksurfaces for focused and adjustable task lighting that is ultra-modern with a hint of industrial chic.

Kitchen wall lights

Dar Lighting Dar Abel Single Light Wall Fitting In Satin Black And Brass Finish

If you don’t want a looming ceiling light in the centre of your kitchen, wall lights are an excellent alternative. Dot these around your kitchen walls to create ambient light throughout the room. Whether you enjoy wall sconces, lanterns, up and down lights or flush wall lights, choose lights that reflect your kitchen style.

Spotlights

The Italian Collection Alfa Single Light Wall Spotlight in Satin Nickel Finish

A trendy kitchen wall light option is wall spotlights. Attach them to the walls to illuminate work surfaces more clearly, and install them where you need the most light.

Under-cupboard kitchen lights

Under-cupboard kitchen lights are a sleek and modern way to illuminate your kitchen. As an accent light type, under-cupboard kitchen lights sit underneath your kitchen cabinets and light the space below.

You can install this lighting type to illuminate a dark work surface or the sink area shadowed by the cabinets, offering a practical light solution. Or, set it underneath your floor-level cabinets for a futuristic glow on the floor. Use these lights to create an ultra-modern aesthetic in your kitchen.

Kitchen floor lighting

Selected by Lyco Square Recessed Ground Light in Stainless Steel Finish

Who’s to say that walkover lights are exclusively for the outside? Why not use walkover lights to highlight your kitchen cupboards or island from the floor? Use uplighting techniques to highlight your kitchen furniture and create a unique, ultra-modern lighting design.

Kitchen shelf lamps

BHS Lighting BHS Tizzo Retro Single Light Ceramic Table Lamp In Cobalt Blue Finish

If you’re interested in trending lighting, we’ve seen people using tiny lamps to decorate their kitchen shelves. To create an aesthetically pleasing kitchen environment, interior designer influencers have placed a lamp (or two) on their kitchen shelves next to their cookbooks, pasta jars, house plants and other kitchenware.

The effect is subtle, homely and comforting, providing accent lighting to atypical places. Recreate this look with a little lamp from our kitchen lamps at Castlegate Lights.

Kitchen Lighting at Castlegate Lights

Remember, the perfect lighting scheme relies on lighting layers. You will need ambient lights to illuminate the whole room, task lights to help you see and complete tasks and accent lighting to highlight your favourite features and unleash your creative side. Use a selection of these lighting types to complete your kitchen lighting.

Hopefully, our guide has helped you decide what lighting you want to utilise in your kitchen. Now, you can choose what light fittings best suit your interior aesthetic. Browse our kitchen lighting to find the perfect lights for your kitchen interior. We have many styles, from modern to traditional, industrial chic to Scandinavian, to cater to your individual taste.

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February 5, 2024
How to light a kitchen island in 6 easy ways
The kitchen is the heart of the household. It’s where you cook, eat and spend time with family and friends. So, if you’re lucky enough to have a beautiful kitchen island in an open-plan kitchen, don’t keep it in the dark!

Kitchen lighting, especially lighting for your island, is essential to get right as it should function as task lighting for meal preparation but also create the right atmosphere for socialising and enjoying meals together.

Kitchens need to function with adequate lighting, but that doesn’t mean your lighting has to be glaring and ugly. Here are six ways to light your kitchen island to provide functional lighting for cooking, cleaning and socialising that also looks stunning.

Table of contents
Pendant lights

Pendant lights are a fantastic way to illuminate your kitchen island. If they have a shade, they provide concentrated task lighting to the island to help you see what you’re doing. Alternatively, you can choose a more open pendant light for general ambient lighting.

In addition to providing practical lighting, a pendant light over an island can contribute to the interior design of your kitchen. As they usually hang low and are in the middle of the room, highlighting the primary workspace of the kitchen, it can be the first thing people see when they walk into the kitchen. Therefore, you want the centrepiece of the room to look stylish.

If you want your pendant light to be an eye-catching design choice that draws the eye and sparks interest, consider an extravagant or innovative design that looks unique. Or, go big to make a bold statement with an oversized pendant light.

Size also matters. The size and shape of your kitchen island will determine how many pendant lights you need to illuminate it sufficiently. If you have a smaller or square kitchen island, you may want to opt for a singular statement pendant light.

Or, if you have a large island or it’s more rectangular, you can create a very eye-catching look by following the rule of three. Suspend three pendant lights in a row above your kitchen island for a dramatic triplet effect. You can also find pendant light fixtures with multiple lights in one fitting to achieve this impactful look.

Whether you have a country-style kitchen, an industrial-chic interior or an ultra-modern aesthetic, there are hundreds of kitchen island lighting options in our pendant lights collection here at Castlegate Lights.

How low should a pendant light hang?

We recommend suspending your pendant light with a 76-91cm gap between the light and the kitchen island. However, there is some room for creative licence; the lower the lamp, the more dramatic the lighting effect.

However, you still want to maintain a functional workspace. The lower the lamp is, the more concentrated the beam will be, diminishing the ambient light to the rest of the kitchen and creating more shadows on the countertop.

Furthermore, you don’t want the height of the pendant lights over the island to interfere with your work. Hang the pendant light too low, and you could knock it with your hands or head.

Chandeliers

Similarly to pendant lights, a chandelier can illuminate your kitchen island surface, provide task lighting and add elegance and grandeur to your kitchen.

Chandeliers provide an eye-catching statement piece in the centre of your kitchen, perfect for highlighting the central kitchen island. Whether you have an industrial-style kitchen with brass fixings or an elegant French country-style kitchen, we offer a range of chandeliers to match your kitchen aesthetic.

Spotlights

There are other ways to illuminate your kitchen island if you don’t like the idea of a protruding hanging pendant light in the middle of your kitchen. For example, spotlights are a sleek and subtle way to illuminate your kitchen island.

We offer a selection of spotlight light fittings, depending on the size of your island and where you want to illuminate. From single spotlights to multiple spotlights mounted on a bar, you can adjust spotlights to point where you need the light most on your kitchen island. For larger kitchen islands, choose a longer spotlight bar to illuminate the entire space.

Downlights

Downlights are another excellent way to illuminate your kitchen island. They will allow you to see what you’re doing, whether cooking up a storm or serving drinks to guests, by providing bright, direct light.

Strategically place a selection of downlights above your kitchen island to get the light you need to complete your daily tasks. Or, use adjustable downlights to point light beams towards your high-work areas.

Downlights offer practical yet clean and minimalist lighting, perfect for a modern kitchen interior.

Track Lighting

Another contemporary way to illuminate your kitchen island is to add track lighting. Track lighting consists of a ceiling-mounted track which supplies an electric current to the track lights. The lights slot into the track. And because they aren’t attached, you can fully adjust their position and direction to suit your needs at any time.

Track lighting has a contemporary, industrial aesthetic, meaning it blends well in a modern kitchen design.

Under-cabinet Lighting

Lighting your kitchen island doesn’t have to be purely functional. Add light layers to your island by highlighting the underside of the countertop to create a futuristic glow.

Under-cabinet lighting around the island can add depth to your kitchen, and when you finish cooking or socialising, leave the light on to create a cosy atmosphere.

Kitchen island lighting at Castlegate Lights

Kitchen island lighting is primarily functional. It helps you see what you’re doing while cooking, eating and socialising, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring.

Create an eye-catching centrepiece with a pendant light or chandelier suspended above the worktop and create a focal point around the room’s centre. Or, if you have a modern kitchen, use spotlights or downlights to illuminate your kitchen island with bright adjustable beams.

Whether you have a modern kitchen aesthetic or a vintage interior, you can find hundreds of kitchen lights in our collection to beautifully illuminate your kitchen island at Castlegate Lights.

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November 3, 2023
What Types Of Light To Use In The Dining Room

The kitchen is often described as the heart of the home. If that’s true, then the dining room must be the brain. It’s the place where the family can come together to discuss the events of the day, talk about their successes, their problems, share jokes, plan new memories and enjoy each other’s company, even for just an hour or so as a cohesive unit over a delicious meal.

Home design tackles the dining room in numerous ways; whether that’s through a kitchen-diner, a lounge-diner or as a separate room in its own right. Whichever you have, how you light the room is going to go a long way to create a space that brings family and friends together, but can also look fantastic when it’s empty.

For most people, dining room lighting starts with a beautiful pendant hanging elegantly above the table. We have pendants from, amongst others, manufacturers like Endon or Elstead Lighting that all cover a multitude of styles, but would all look amazing. When choosing a pendant, it’s important to bear in mind a number of factors you might not consider when choosing the right light for your home.

First thing to look at when choosing your fitting is the height of your ceiling, especially where it’s going to hang. A higher ceiling usually lends itself better to larger light fixtures. These aren’t just the preserve of older homes, many new builds now have ceilings that measure 9 feet from the floor. Of course, there are no set rules about this, so it’s very much down to personal taste, but there are some things you can consider.

When it comes to the table, most pendant lighting tends to hang between 28” – 32” (71cm – 81cm) above the table top in homes with a more common 8ft ceiling. Again, this isn’t written in stone, but you also need to consider how tall your family is. You don’t want to be banging your head when laying or clearing the table.

When choosing a fitting, it’s important that the fixture complements, rather than overpowers, your table. Many customers choose a light fitting that echoes the shape of the dining room table, whether that’s square, round or oval. This brings a sense of harmony, but it also looks great when it contradicts, so don’t be afraid to play around with shapes. This can be done with the fitting itself, but also the shades around the bulbs.

Of course, there is more to dining room lighting than hanging pendants. Dining room lighting is as diverse as you are. Whether you want to go for spot lights, recessed lighting or even the contemporary string lighting that covers walls, surrounds picture frames or illuminated under glass tables, we have just what you’re looking for.

Another important aspect to consider when it comes to illuminating your dining room, is the light fitting. Most people are used to the standard on / off switch, but adding dimmable lights can mean you can utilise the dining room for so many more occasions. If you like to add a drum shade, then it adds a calming sense to the room, which can be further enhanced with a dimmer switch. If you want to work at the table or let the kids do their homework, then it can be cranked up to illuminate the whole room and paired down when you’re looking to have that romantic meal with your loved one.

The right lighting in a dining room, in fact in any room, can bring it alive. It can change the mood, change the look, change the atmosphere and obviously change the light. For all the changes it can bring, it can also do one thing that should remain the same; bring people together.

September 28, 2017
Lighting For Your Home: Kitchen

A room can take on a brand new look by simply adding or rearranging lighting options, and a kitchen is no different. As the kitchen is a room well frequented throughout a typical day, why not spend a little time looking at the kitchen lighting options available at Castlegate Lights.

Gone are the days of having only one lighting option of a single strip fluorescent light that cast an unflattering light on food preparations and gave an impersonal feel to a space that is often deemed the heart of a home. So discover how to expertly light your kitchen with an alternative option, such as spotlights which work to highlight the room in an aesthetically pleasing way. Equally spaced when installed in the ceiling to avoid over-heating, this type of lighting use energy-friendly LEDs, which will last a lot longer than regular light bulbs.

An additional lighting option is to include subtle lighting, which can dramatically change the feeling of a living space. These discreet of light underneath kitchen cupboards or on bottom panels are a subtle, gentle way of lighting a kitchen when full lighting is not required.

If your kitchen is open plan and includes a dining area, lighting is even more important. Consider a dimmer switch so you can set the mood for romantic meals or just relaxing over a meal with the family. A ceiling bar fitted with spotlights can throw light in a large room with adjustable spotlight heads.

To inject some style with your interior lighting, consider the industrial trend which has become popular in recent years. A ceiling pendant with a chrome or antique brass finish can add to the fashionable feel, and easily fit in with your home decor. A designer statement light can be an excellent focal point in a kitchen/dining room and we have a great range of ultra modern lighting to help make your home look stylish.

Designer lighting or simple subtle lighting, whatever your style, we’ve got you covered.

February 2, 2016
Lights for Designer Kitchens

The kitchen is obviously one of the most important areas in your home. It is the place from where meals are prepared and a lot of happy moments are spent and shared with family members. This is why many of us like our kitchen to be appropriately decorated with attractive designer kitchen lighting.

Designer lighting gives your kitchen a warm and cosy ambience. Or if you prefer, you could chose a more modern, conmtemporary design. You can get a good quality kitchen lighting without causing any expensive damages or any reconstruction, so you should make sure what kind of lights you need first. With a little effort and time spent, your kitchen can be made to look elegant.

If you want your kitchen to have that stylish and smart look, you should have proper designer kitchen lighting. It should highlight different spaces of your kitchen and other appliances. There four basic kitchen lighting styles; accent, ambient, task and the decorative lighting. If you want to enhance the complete look of your kitchen then go for the task kitchen lighting. Good lightning will help in chopping the vegetables with a sharp knife or to read your recipe book. If you choose task lighting it will improve the area that your working area making it safer and more enjoyable.

If you want to differentiate your kitchen from the rest of the house, you should choose the accent type of designer kitchen lighting. Each and every inch and corner of your kitchen is worked out so you can work efficiently and finish your work quicker. Accent lightings utilises glass cabinets to highlight your kitchen utensils and they also consume less electricity.

Another type of designer kitchen lighting is the ambient lighting. On many occasions, this kind of lighting goes overlooked, although this lighting can make your kitchen look beautiful. Many people think that there is no need for additional lights in the kitchen but you should remember that these lights create a soft magical glow which makes every part of your kitchen elegant and beautiful.

The last type of designer kitchen lighting is decorative lighting. This type of lighting adds a sparkle to your kitchen and also gives a magic touch to your kitchen. But if you overdo this it could ruin the look of your home, and even make your kitchen dysfunctional to work in.

February 28, 2011
Shedding Light on Kitchen Lighting

When designing a new kitchen lighting is usually the last thing you think about, but to create the perfect design giving your kitchen character and atmosphere it should be properly lit. Light is not just for function but is an integral part of aesthetics and can transform your kitchen from a slum to a tranquil, exceptionally soothing haven. Here at Castlegate we offer a wide range of in kitchen lighting which will create a warm glow that fills a room, softens shadows and helps to make people feel instantly welcome in your kitchen. Not only do we offer you fantastic lighting which will revolutionise your kitchen but we give you all this for unbelievable low prices.

So why not take a look?

July 12, 2010