Kitchen lighting is three systems, and most kitchens have one
Most Michigan kitchens we walk into have a single fixture in the middle of the ceiling. It puts your own shadow on the counter you are working at, it makes the cabinets look flat, and from November to February it is doing the whole job, because the sun sets before quarter past five in December here.
Good kitchen lighting is three separate layers on three separate switches. Ambient light fills the room. Task light lands on the counters, the sink and the range where the work happens. Accent light does the cabinets, the backsplash and the island, and it is the layer that makes a kitchen look designed rather than lit.
Market ranges in this region, by piece. Six to ten recessed cans run $1,200 to $2,500 installed. Under-cabinet LED runs $800 to $1,500. Pendants over an island run $400 to $2,000 depending on the fixtures. A new circuit runs $500 to $800, and a panel upgrade runs $2,000 to $4,000. Outlet and USB upgrades run $100 to $200 per location. A full kitchen electrical budget lands at $4,000 to $8,000, and our kitchen line-item breakdown shows where that sits against everything else.
The numbers that make it look right
Color temperature is the setting people get wrong most often. Kitchens want 2700K to 3000K, which reads as warm white. Anything at 4000K or above turns a kitchen clinical, makes wood cabinets look grey and makes food look wrong, and it is what big-box fixtures default to. Ask for the number, not the word on the box.
Color rendering matters almost as much and nobody mentions it. A CRI of ninety or better is what lets you see whether the chicken is done and whether the paint sample actually matches. Cheap LED runs at eighty and it is visible in a kitchen even if you cannot name what is off.
Then placement. Under-cabinet strips go toward the front edge of the cabinet bottom, not the back, or the light hits the backsplash and glares back at you instead of landing on the counter. Recessed cans go over the front edge of the counter rather than centered in the ceiling, so you are not standing between the light and your work. Pendants over an island hang with about thirty to thirty-six inches between the counter and the bottom of the fixture, and they get spaced off the island ends rather than the room walls.
Everything gets dimmed. A kitchen at full output is right for chopping and wrong for every other hour, and dimming is the cheapest quality-of-life item on this page. Smart controls extend that to scenes and schedules, and our specialty lighting design page covers the more ambitious versions.
Code, circuits and the panel
Kitchen electrical is one of the more heavily governed parts of a house, for good reason. Countertop receptacles are GFCI protected. Code wants at least one outlet per four linear feet of countertop, and any built-in appliance gets its own twenty-amp circuit. Adding lighting layers frequently means adding circuits, and adding circuits means the panel needs spare spaces.
That is where older houses get expensive. A 1950s hundred-amp panel that is already full turns a lighting project into a service conversation, and the panel upgrade is $2,000 to $4,000 before a single fixture goes in. We count the spaces on the first visit rather than discovering it at rough-in. Our overview of Michigan kitchen codes and licensing covers what gets inspected and when.
One more Michigan-specific item. In houses built before about 1950, particularly around Ypsilanti and older Ann Arbor neighborhoods, knob-and-tube wiring still turns up in kitchen ceilings. It cannot be extended and it cannot be buried in insulation, so any lighting plan in those houses starts with what gets replaced rather than what gets added.
Plaster ceilings and the recessed can problem
In drywall, a recessed light is a hole saw and a remodel can with spring clips. In plaster over wood lath, it is a different job. The lath resists a hole saw, the plaster keys break away from the lath around the cut, and a can that clips to plaster alone will eventually sag. It is doable, it is slower, and it needs patching by someone who can match a plaster ceiling.
Which is why the honest recommendation in an older house is sometimes not recessed lighting at all. Surface-mounted fixtures, track discreetly placed, a larger central fixture doing ambient work with the task layer under the cabinets, and pendants where the plan wants a moment. That combination reads better in a 1925 kitchen than a grid of cans, and it costs less.
If the ceiling is coming down anyway for other reasons, the calculation flips entirely and recessed becomes cheap. That is worth knowing before the demolition scope is set, which is a design conversation rather than an electrical one. The kitchen design page covers how those two get sequenced.
What each surface needs
Five decisions cover almost every kitchen we light.
- Counters get under-cabinet light on every run where anyone works, on its own switch, dimmable, warm.
- The sink gets a dedicated fixture or a can directly above it, because dishes at night are the most common task in the room.
- The range gets light in the hood, and the hood light gets checked for output, since most builder hoods are useless.
- The island gets pendants for the look and a can or two for the work, since pendants alone leave the far edge dark.
- Inside glass cabinets and in a walk-in pantry gets light on a door switch, which is a small cost and a daily pleasure.
Toe-kick lighting is the optional one worth mentioning. It costs little during a remodel, it gives you a kitchen you can walk into at two in the morning without waking the house, and it cannot be added later without pulling cabinets.
What to look at before you spend anything
Stand at your main prep counter in the evening with the lights on and look at whether your own shadow is on the cutting board. That single observation tells you whether you need task lighting or a new ceiling fixture, and they are different projects. Then check the color temperature printed on your existing bulbs. Then open the panel and count blank spaces. Then look at whether the ceiling is drywall or plaster, which you can usually tell by tapping it.
After that it is selections, and lighting is the one category where the fixtures should be chosen against the cabinet and countertop finishes rather than on their own. See custom cabinets and countertops and backsplash, because a warm brass pendant against a cool grey quartz is a decision, not an accident. The mistakes to avoid piece covers the ones we see repeated.
Questions we get asked
How many recessed cans does a kitchen need
Fewer than most plans show. Six to ten covers most kitchens we work in, placed over work surfaces rather than spaced evenly across the ceiling. A ceiling full of cans lights the floor beautifully and the counters poorly.
Are LED strips under cabinets worth it
They are the highest-value item on this page at $800 to $1,500. Specify a continuous linear fixture rather than puck lights, or you get scallops of light and dark along the counter, which is the look people are trying to avoid.
Can lighting be updated without a remodel
Yes, and it is one of the few kitchen improvements that stands alone well. Under-cabinet light, better bulbs at the right temperature, dimmers and one good fixture over the sink is a one to two day job with real daily payoff.
What about natural light
Worth chasing before you add fixtures. A larger window or a skylight changes a north-facing kitchen more than any lamp will, and it belongs in the design conversation with the rest of the kitchen remodel.
Turn the lights on with us standing there
We are a design-build contractor in Ypsilanti, so the drawings, the permits, the electrical and the crews sit under one contract. See how a project runs, or view our portfolio. Lighting elsewhere in the house is covered on basement lighting, in our basement lighting guide, on bathroom lighting and ventilation and on outdoor lighting.
Contact us now for a free quote, or call the shop at (734) 540-0347. We will come at dusk if you want to see the difference rather than hear about it. Request an estimate to start, and the kitchen flooring and island pages cover what the light lands on.
What is in the price and what is not
A Wright’s kitchen lighting budget includes the lighting plan itself, permits and electrical inspection, new circuits and any panel work the plan requires, recessed housings and trims, under-cabinet fixtures and their drivers, pendant fixtures and boxes rated for them, switching and dimmers, GFCI protection at the countertops, drywall or plaster patching where fixtures go in, paint touch-up on the affected surfaces, and daily photo updates.
It does not include decorative fixtures you buy elsewhere and hand us, though we are glad to install them and will tell you honestly whether a fixture will do the job it is being asked to do. It also excludes knob-and-tube replacement beyond the work area, a service upgrade if the utility requires a new drop, and repairs to conditions found once a ceiling is opened. Those come to you as a written change order with the cost and the schedule effect before work continues.
How long it takes
Under-cabinet lighting alone is a one to two day job in a finished kitchen. A full lighting plan with recessed cans, pendants and new switching runs five to ten working days in drywall, spread across rough-in, inspection, patching, paint and trim-out. Plaster ceilings add two to four days for the patching and the plaster to cure before paint.
A panel upgrade is its own event. It means a scheduled power shutdown, a utility coordination window, and an inspection, and it typically adds three to five days to the front of the project. We would rather tell you that in the first meeting than at rough-in, which is why the panel gets counted on the first visit.
One sequencing note. Lighting rough-in has to happen before drywall and before cabinets go on the wall, because a fixture location that moves after the boxes are set means patching finished surfaces. If the plan is a staged remodel, the lighting layout gets decided in the first stage even when the fixtures get installed in the last one.
The disruption is modest compared with most kitchen work. Power goes off in scheduled windows rather than for days, the sink and the range stay usable, and the dusty part is the patching. If lighting is going in alongside a larger remodel it gets sequenced with the rest, and the kitchen remodel timeline shows where it lands. Renovation financing covers the larger version.
