Three layers of light, and why one is not enough
A kitchen needs three layers of lighting: general light for the whole room, task light directly over the worktop, and ambient light that makes the kitchen part of the home in the evening. A single fitting in the middle of the ceiling cannot do it because it sits behind you: when you chop, your own head and shoulders throw a shadow right onto the board.
Each layer switches independently. In the morning you want everything on; at dinner, just the ambient layer and a little general light. That comes down to separate circuits, which have to be planned before the plasterer closes the walls.
General light: a grid, not a single point
General light is usually recessed downlights in a suspended ceiling. The key placement rule: the row of downlights over the work zone runs not down the middle of the kitchen but roughly above the front edge of the worktop, 30–40 cm out from the wall-unit doors. The light then lands in front of you, not behind.
The grid follows the cabinet drawing, not the centre of the room. Otherwise one downlight ends up directly above an open wall-unit door and another above the hood, where it does nothing. A dimmer on the general circuit is almost always worth it.
Task light: the strip goes at the front edge
Task light means an LED strip under the wall units. A common mistake is fixing it against the wall: the light bounces off a glossy splashback into your eyes and the front of the worktop stays in half-shadow. The strip belongs near the front edge, recessed into the underside of the cabinet, with a diffuser so the individual dots do not show.
Where there are no wall units, as in many open kitchens, task light comes from downlights or a linear fitting in the ceiling directly over the worktop. Over an island, pendants, usually 70–80 cm above the surface so they do not dazzle anyone sitting there.
Choose LEDs with high colour rendering, CRI 90 or above. With poor colour rendering, meat looks grey and herbs look dull.
Ambient light: the kitchen after dark
The third layer comes in once cooking is done. Plinth lighting at floor level, light inside glass cabinets or on open shelves, a concealed cove near the ceiling. It is warm, around 2,700 K, always dimmable, and on its own it is enough to get a glass of water at night without switching everything on.
In an open kitchen this layer matters most. In the evening you see the kitchen from the sofa, and if all that is on is 4,000 K task light, the living room feels like an office. In the Urgel flat in the Eixample the kitchen opens onto the living area, and that is exactly the kind of question settled at design stage: how the kitchen reads from the living room when nobody is using it.
Controls and colour temperature
At least three circuits: general, task and ambient. Switches at the kitchen entrance and, if there is an island, duplicates there too. Dimmers are matched to the specific LED drivers, otherwise the light flickers at low levels.
Keep one colour-temperature logic. General and task light at 3,000 K or 4,000 K, but the same, or you get patches of different tone on the worktop. Ambient light goes warmer.
And a question people remember too late: where do the strip drivers go? They must be reachable without dismantling cabinets, for example in the plinth or above the wall units, because they are the part that fails first.
When to plan it and what costs the most
Kitchen lighting is drawn at the same time as the cabinet layout, before the wiring. The costliest mistakes: the cable outlet for the strip is not where the cabinet ended up; downlights that do not line up with the units; a forgotten feed for lighting inside a cabinet. Each one means opening a finished ceiling or wall.
We cover lighting scenarios for the whole home in a separate guide. For the kitchen, one rule is enough: cabinets to the millimetre first, then lighting, then the electrician.
Next step
Send us the kitchen plan or the cabinet design if you already have one. We will overlay the three lighting layers and switching groups and show you what needs deciding before the electrical work starts. We reply within an hour, in Spanish or Russian.