Avoiding Shadows with Under-Cabinet LED Lighting

[cedricuk]

I’m interested in how people have positioned under-cabinet LED lighting to get even illumination across the worktop.

 

With LED strips, does mounting them towards the front edge of the wall units generally give the best results, or is it better to position them further back? I can imagine the placement makes quite a difference to shadows when standing at the worktop, as well as how visible the light source is from across the room.

 

For those who have installed this type of lighting, what positioning worked best in your kitchen? Did you use a diffuser or aluminium profile, and would you change anything if doing it again?

[Tetrarch]

In a previous house I had an LED strip right behind the pelmet/cabinet rail. This was old tech and I had "dotty" LED's that went yellow in very short order and the positioning wasn't right. I replaced this with an 45-deg angle bead channel at the very back - this cast a shadow and wasn't good either

 

Roll forward to 2024 and lessons learnt. I (had) routed a channel right in the centre of the cabinet. This positions it a quarter of the way towards the front of a 600mm worktop. You also need to take into account the reflectivity of your splashback as this changes the light considerably. Ours is actually the same as the worktop in white so highly reflective

 

• The channel has wings that cover the routed channel edges - definitely a good idea

 

• Go for a high-quality as many LED's per m as you can afford as this smoothes out the light

 

• I went for a CCT strip that is co-ordinated with the same (but non-winged) channel in the rooflights. This makes mood setting really easy of an evening. It works so well that I felt able to not include the hideous cost of LED cabinet lighting from the manufacturer.

 

Would I change anything? Hmmm - I don't think so. We had three years to plan due to planning so we had a very good idea of what we wanted and Mrs Tet was happy to delegate that part of the kitchen largely to me 

 

I attach some pictures below

Regards

Tet

I should really take some proper pictures but that would mean a LOT of tidying up...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JpManning]

Agree with Tetrarch that right at the very front or right at the back are both the weak spots. Tight to the front lip you get glare when you're sitting across the room, and right at the back you just light the splashback and leave the front of the worktop in your own shadow. Somewhere around 50 to 150mm back from the front edge of the wall unit, ideally with the light angled slightly towards the wall, usually gives the most even spread.

A few things that make a bigger difference than people expect:

Use an aluminium profile with an opal diffuser. Without one you get rows of dots reflected in gloss or quartz worktops, and the profile also helps with heat so the strip lasts longer.

If the units have a light pelmet, sit the profile just behind it so the strip itself can't be seen from the table or sofa.

Go for a high density or COB strip, around 3000K to 4000K, with a CRI of 90 or more so food and worktops look natural.

Plan the driver position and cable routes before the wall units go up. Getting a feed to each run afterwards is the fiddly bit, and a driver in an accessible cupboard makes it easy to swap later.