We have the Kichler linear lighting system (a track with wire and clip on "lamp" or bulb holders--xenon bulbs). We like it very much. Had problems with the initial bulb holders (some didn't light up consistently; needed to be jiggled or tapped to light). I finally called Kichler (2 1/2 yrs post reno?), and was told that we had the old style holders (which had since been modified because of the very problem we were having). They sent a few new-style/modified holders for us to test out and they worked (!). They sent us all new new holders to replace the old ones.

Not only good, even lighting, but good customer service as well. FYI, the first person with whom I spoke wasn't as helpful, but the second woman went the extra "mile" and checked with one of the tech guys (who told her that the holders had been modified).

I recommend against puck lights, because they leave circles of light on the counter, versus strip lights which have more even lighting.

You didn't say what type of undercabinet light you are considering. I recommend against halogen because they are way too hot, and there are so many better choices out there. Other choices would be xenon strips, LED's, and mini-fluorescent "T4's". The mini-fluorescents won't be dimmable, but may be less expensive than xenon's or LED's. Also, don't think that fluorescents still look all white, ghostly and flickering the way they did 20 years ago - T4's like those from Pegasus Lighting give a really nice task light for your counters.

We wanted our undercabinet lights to be dimmable, so chose xenon strips. When we were shopping 6-8 months ago, the LED's were too expensive, but I understand they have come down in price considerably. One advantage of LED's is that they are so slim; xenon strips are bigger, but we felt that nothing else was underneath our cabinets anyway so we didn't need anything super small. If you are interested in LED undercabinet lighting, do a search on this forum (type in the search box "LED undercabinet lighting") for discussion and recommendations.

We have the Juno xenon undercabinet lights, their UPX line, which has the low voltage transformer built into each strip. The Juno UPX's are not the cheapest of the xenons - you can go to HD or Lowe's and find cheaper. We chose the Juno's because of the good name of the brand, the sizes of the strips offered, and we like that the covering (the "reflector") is glass (most other brands have plastic reflectors). We cut the expense a bit by finding a less expensive source online.

Other tips - make sure you install the strips toward the front of the upper cabinets, not toward the back. If you install them toward the back, they will mostly just light the backsplash, rather than the counters, and the strips themselves will be more visible. If you install them toward the front, they will properly light the counters, and also they will not be visible.

I recommend getting a dimmer for the flexibility of having task lighting and mood lighting. Xenon and LED strips need either an "electronic low voltage dimmer" or a "magnetic low voltage dimmer"; the instructions will tell you which. These dimmers can be easily found at Home Depot, Lowe's or online. Here's the Lutron Skylark Electronic Low Voltage Dimmer, but there are many other styles.

Hope my overview helped.

I haven't started thinking about this yet -- I may want the mini-fluorescents. Dimmable isn't an issue for me. The newer fluorescents have quite nice light and no flicker issues (we'll probably end up with CFLs for all of our lighting in the new kitchen). I like that we don't need a transformer, too. And I think this is much less expensive than Xenon or LED options.

We purchased Kichler LED's for our new kitchen. The cost was OUCH ($2500), but the result is spectatular! Love the way it makes our backsplash and counters glow. Good task lighting too.

"I recommend against puck lights, because they leave circles of light on the counter..."

Only if you put them to far apart.

We went with WAC Lighting xenon light bars. They are line voltage so no transformer is needed and are dimmable with a regular dimmer switch. They were fairly inexpensive and work well.

Here is a link that might be useful: xenon light bars

Brickeyee - you'd have to space them very close together, which becomes a PITA to install. The strip lighting is a cleaner, slimmer choice, easier to install, whether it's the mini-fluorescents, xenons or LED's. I can see no reason to choose pucks instead of these alternatives.

Scrapbookheaven - those high prices for LED's are what we saw too. But I know I saw some threads here (or on the Lighting Forum?) that talked about less expensive LED undercabinet lighting available now. Look for names Ledpro and Photonier, though I don't have direct knowledge of them, just know they are less expensive. I also heard that Lowe's is now selling lower-priced LED undercabinet lighting.

I have the cheap fluorescent bar lights from Lowes. Love them. It is a nice neutral light.

Alwaysfixin: excellent information, and thank you.

I was between fluorescents and LED's for my under cabinet lighting. I went with LED's in the main kitchen and fluorescent in a smaller adjacent area - what a difference the LED's make! They are a beautiful, warm, even light. Yes, more expensive but I was told I won't have to think about replacing a bulb for years and they are very energy efficient. I am very happy with my decision to go with LED.

Ikea LED strips. Extremely thin and 2 sets (enough for our kitchen) cost a total of $100. Thrilled with the outcome.

We have the Seagull Xenon Low voltage linear lights, on a dimmer. Love them.

Thanks for this post, reading catmom's response got me moving on a problem. Mine have been flickering since we installed them, never the same bulbs. Sometimes not coming on at all. Catmom had told me before about her issue. I asked at our lighting store about this, they told me no problem with Seagull. So I let it go and decided I would just have to flick my bulbs when they did this. But after re-reading her comment, I picked up the phone and called Seagull directly. They were soooo helpful. She told me that years ago there was a problem with the bulbs and they would do what ours are doing. She said, you never know if the store had old bulbs or not. She took my name and address and is mailing me 22 new bulbs. So, I would say that their customer service is pretty darn good.

I love the dimmer switch by the way. And I didn't mention the transformer is located in the basement, out of the way.

We went with LED's, the light is a little on the blue side.

Our Kichler Xenon strips were installed in early 2006. As I read this thread it dawned on me that we use them daily and have never had to change a bulb one time. We've been totally happy with them and they weren't expensive. I did buy them online. I just looked to see which ones we have. The item number is 10584-BZ. They do get warm but not super hot like halogen, etc. No complaints from us!

I have the Lowe's Utilitech brand LED bar lights. They are apparently ( or were, in August) distributed by Kichler, according to the back of the package. I love the light from them. My west-facing kitchen looks sunny in the morning with the lights on. I turn them on again when the sun goes down and the light is very soft and fills in all the dark places. The electrical draw is miniscule.

The bars come in 18" and 27"; the 10" is special order. My electrician
hardwired them but they come with cords with plugs. I don't have them on
a dimmer; I really don't think they're needed.

I used 4 18" and 1 27" and, as I recall, the total was under $300 and I
had a discount coupon from lowes. I thought it was a pretty good deal for Kichler. Even the electrician was impressed and ran to buy some for himself!

Helene

Like Katsmah, I have WAC's dimmable, xenon light bars. No transformer necessary. The light is warm, evenly distributed and I haven't yet had to replace a bulb in over 2 years now. As you might guess, I think they're great.

"you'd have to space them very close together, which becomes a PITA to install. "

Actually, just space them about two thirds of the cabinet to counter distance and the light is uniform since they overlap.

I do not think they are any harder to install, you just need more of them.

I dislike most of the other options since the light is not as good for color rendering.

Line voltage halogens under cabinets are not very rugged.
Just like the filament in a 12 V car bulb is much more rugged than a 120 V light bulb, the line voltage under cabinet halogens have the same problem.

Low voltage filaments can be made much more resistant to vibration than 120 V filaments.

I have removed a decent number of line voltage under cabinet lights after folks found them to have short bulb life form the normal vibration of putting dishes into the cabinets.

I had the halogen pucks and they were awful. They got so hot they actually melted or toasted food in the cabinet above. I had them removed and replaced with xenon lights. They are okay but I sometimes wish they gave off more light.

Do avoid the halogen pucks!

We are having T4 fluorescents installed. I don't see a point in dimming task lighting. What kind of mood are you setting when they don't really light up the whole room as it is. Undimmed and by themselves they create a mood. We already have the recessed lights on a dimmer and two pendants on a dimmer. No real need to have all of your kitchen lights on a dimmer.

oh johnny, I disagree. if every light in my house could be on a dimmer, it would be. My kitchen and family room are open to each other, and dimming those ucb lights in the kitchen and just having them on in there sets a great mood. Even though my recessed lights are also on a dimmer, we really don't leave those on in a dimmed state to be used as 'mood lighting'.

We installed Alico Zee-Lights (Xenon) lighting strips & are very happy. They seem to be slightly slimmer than others so hide under your cabinet nicely & come in several colors to blend with your cabinet colors. We installed ours at the front to middle of the cabinet & installed power strips at the back to avoid outlets in the backsplash. (I do have 2 outlets for items that are mostly on the counter -- toaster & coffee pot & didn't want a "trailing" cord -- but for mixers, etc. these power strips are great.)

Zee-lights also have a bright & dim setting if you want to dim (plus you can put on a dimmer, if desired). We received a designer discount with seemed to be slightly less than on-line pricing, as well slightly cheaper than the Kichler. The measurements seem a little different than Kichler (perhaps translation from metric system), but the coverage is great. They come in smaller lengths, as well ~24", 36", & 48" runs. As with other Xenon it is warmer than florescent, but much cooler than halogen.

I agree with Beekeeperswife and disagree with Johnnyl53, regarding dimmers. I use my undercabinet lights on full strength for task lighting and on dimmed strength for mood lighting, and love the versatility. When they're dimmed, at night, they make my granite look fabulous. Plus, it's not like the dimmer is a big expense. A dimmer costs about $45, though fancier designs can be $100. Um, how much are you spending on your kitchen redo? And what percentage of that is $45? Why spend the money on the undercabinet lighting, but forego the flexibility to dim them?

I think we need to clarify though about what some people are saying are "line voltage". Xenon lights are low-voltage. They are converted to line voltage with a transformer which is either located separately (as Beekeeperswife's and mine are), or have the transformer built into the strip. A built-in transformer is less expensive and easier to install. It seems that some posts here say their xenons are line voltage, or that they don't have transformers, so I want to clarify. As I said, xenon lighting is low voltage, and the xenon strips that seem to be line voltage are actually made that way by the transformer built into the strip.

Brickeyee's comment: Line voltage halogens under cabinets are not very rugged..." - it looks like everyone here agrees that halogens are a bad choice for undercabinet lighting, though I hadn't known about this particular issue with halogens, so thanks. However, I have to disagree with the comment "I dislike most of the other options since the light is not as good for color rendering". I am not familiar with LED lights, but my Juno xenons' light is bright and very white. Also, these days you can get the minifluorescent T4's and T5's in a wider range of color temperatures.

I have been shopping for UCL for months, waiting for the price of LED to drop some more. My DH finally said I could go ahead, so come Monday I'm ordering LED light bars from superbrightleds.com. The lights (182"), power supply, dimmer and all the other accessories (clamps, jumpers etc) will be over $400. That is huge for me to spend on this, but will be so nice! The cool thing about LED is they won't need replaced for 10-15 years. And of course by then there will be something out there even better.

I installed the super brights from Elemental Led under my cabs recently and found them to be the perfect light. Expensive? Not when I compare them to what I've found at the big box store. Plus they are smaller, thinner and produce perfect lighting for my countertops. And the plus side of LED lights is the low cost of ownership.

I just bought these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZUF8Y0/ref=oss_product

My neighbor chose dimmable LED strips from www.elementalled.com. They look great and I will get the same. She also chose LED lights from there for her closets (on a door opening switch) and as accent lights on her wall shelves.

Thanks so much for all the responses!

I agree with Johnny and don't see the point of having dimmable task lighting. I have T-4 fluorescents, individually switched, that I found in a resale shop for less than $2 each, including bulbs. Have had them at least 5 years without replacing any bulbs although the bulbs were used when I bought the light fixtures. I like them a lot and will continue to use fluorescents until the time when LED lighting is on par w/ fluorescents from a price & lumen output standpoint.

For mood lighting, I like over the cabinet lights. I have one stick of fluorescent up there, in a corner. My counter tops are more often a mess than not so I sure don't want to use undercab lights for mood lighting!

"I agree with Johnny and don't see the point of having dimmable task lighting."

You can use the same lights for more than one thing.

"For mood lighting, I like over the cabinet lights."

There is no "over the cabinet" space in many houses.

We've been caught in the xenon/LED dilemma....I like the idea of LED, but worry about the color quality of the light. I have heard that there is huge variation and quality control issues. Here's one of the best explanations I've seen, which I just found on the Kichler site (a very good FAQ section there, btw). Given my preference for warmer light and that we wil have light white/gray color marble counter, I'm now thinking that we may go with xenon:

No two LED are exactly the same. Because we buy a range of chips there is variation from chip to chip. These variations are slight. The collective light output of the fixture is the best measure of color output.

LED Chips are manufactured and sorted into "bins" based on color temperature.
The tighter the range of color requested, the more expensive the chip. Kichler purchases the tightest range of chips advertised. Our tolerance is �150K (Kelvin). Chip tolerance ranges from 2850K to 3150K for Kichler products. High brightness LED chips used in Kichler Design Pro LED will make most every color "pop" much better than a typical Xenon lamp. Xenon is a more yellow light. Yellow trends to gray or wash out purples or blues close to purple on the color spectrum. High brightness LED chips are cleaner, whiter and make colors "jump". It feels cooler, but it is not cool blue. Not as warm yellow as xenon.

Competitor LED color range is 875K � 1000K, some do not mention a range. These are the least desirable to a customer � they should steer clear as they have no idea what they will get.
Color variation is also present in incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Fresh from the package they look the same, but with use or as they "burn" a dramatic color change occurs.

Helpful hint:
�Focus should be placed on the lumen output on the counter, the collective color.
�In room interiors where there is extensive use of white, and anything but a pure white (approximately 2700 Kelvin) specification is required, Kichler�s Xenon products may be a good alternative solution.

We just put in dimmable LED undercab lights, they look great. The soft white is very natural and does not change the color of things nearby.

When installing these, my electrical broke something and he ordered a strip to replace the one he broke. It was from the same company but he didn't get the premium lines and it really showed..it was the soft white also but it washed out my paint color. He just ordered the correct one and is waiting for it to come in. It does make a difference. For the little bit of difference in $$ it is worth it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Environmental Lights

I also went with the premium lights from Environmental. They are wonderful - warm white color with a very high CRI (color rating index?) that is very hard to find in lower priced lighting. Very bright but dimmable.

I also bought one light from Elemental to go in a cabinet because I needed a 10 watt instead of 24 watt for the transfomer we already had. I don't like it nearly as much.

One caution if you have shinny granite (I do not) is that the LED strips (maybe the Xenon and Halogen also) will reflect "runway lights" on your counters and the gaps between light bars will be obvious from those reflections.

I know I already posted my rave for my Xenon's above but I'm adding on that I could have written this word for word. I totall agree...

"I agree with Beekeeperswife and disagree with Johnnyl53, regarding dimmers. I use my undercabinet lights on full strength for task lighting and on dimmed strength for mood lighting, and love the versatility. When they're dimmed, at night, they make my granite look fabulous. Plus, it's not like the dimmer is a big expense. A dimmer costs about $45, though fancier designs can be $100. Um, how much are you spending on your kitchen redo? And what percentage of that is $45? Why spend the money on the undercabinet lighting, but forego the flexibility to dim them?"

Undercabinet lighting used at full strength IS for task lighting. But dimmed, it's wonderful for mood lighting. Our kitchen is open to our family room. Once the kitchen is shut down at night, I kick the dimmed UCL's on and it's so lovely and makes the granite look stunning. It definitely wouldn't have the same effect on at full strength. Our cabinets go to the ceiling so we don't have the option of doing over the cabinet dimmed lighting. Why not just put them on dimmers so you at least have the option? As stated above, it's not a great expense.

I wanted to comment again. I have priced the LED at environmnetallights.com also, but have found the same thing about 30% cheaper at superbrightleds.com. The problem is, they don't have as large selection of the accessories (jumpers etc) but we will make do. A 24" bar is $40 compared to $70 at environmental lights. I have compared the light color, lumens and everything, and I think we're definitely going with superbrightleds.com. Just wanted to add that :)

mountaineergirl; did you have anyone at superbrightled's to help you? i've been to their site and can't seem to find any contact info. thx.

Not mountaingirl but if you click the "info and policies" tab at the top of the page on their website, the last item in the pull down menu is "contact us". That page has an 800 number you could call.

thanks!

For those of you who have LED lighting, what width strip did you use? I'm looking at the ones from Kichler which are 12 or 18". We have 36" wide cabinets on each side of the range, and 21" cabinets on each side of the sink. It's about 18" from countertop to bottom of the upper cabinets.
Should I get the widest that can fit?

mundo -

I think you should go with the widest that will fit. The 36" cab should fit the 36" light, because the light bar is actually 35.5" then there won't be such a large gap between cabinets. We have several 33" cabs, so I'm getting 24" and 6" bars to link together.

Great thread! We have the halogen pucks and hate them...looking at the ikea LED. I saw one poster who liked them--anyone else?

And a stupid question, I'm sure: Do you need to have a continuous line of lights under the cabinets, or do they need to be spaced?

Ok posting again - I had posted that we're going with superbrightleds but the customer service is so awesome at environmental (and they discounted some lights for me)so that's who we ended up buying from. They have not yet arrived, hopefully by Friday.

I would like to add a word of caution for people who DIY LED light strips (the kind that come on spools). Many people think that because LEDs are low voltage and low wattage that the heat they generate isn't a big deal.

Please research: LED Thermal Management or LED heat sink.

If you do not heat sink your LEDs you will not get the advertised 50000 (or 100000 or whatever) hours of life from your LEDs. You can likely use a strip of aluminum and stick the LEDs to this for this but you probably need some sort of thermally conductive adhesive.

I am not an engineer and I have no practical experience in this area but I have a relative who designs LED street lights and I am currently trying to figure out what to put in our kitchen and I've been reading ( a lot ).

For those that have experience with both the T-4/T-5 and the LED U/C lights, if I read the specs right, it appears that the LED strips get about 200 lumens per foot, and the T-4's get about double that. Have you found that there is that much difference in light volume?

NumbersJunkie, Thanks for the comment about using the U/C U/C LED's above a polished surface. It probably is worse with LED's because they don't always use a diffusing cover like the fluorescents.