Undercabinet light help - Environmental Lights or KD's?

10 years ago

Hi -

We are getting ready to embark on our remodel soon (finalized cabinet order & plans, demo will hopefully start next month). My KD (works at the cabinet store) just quoted me $1300 for dimmable LED lights, which she says are 3000K brightness. I saw them in the store and they are on a strip, about 3" apart, no diffuser. I don't know what brand. They seemed fine. It would be about half that to go with their Xenon lights, which did have a diffuser. But I don't really like the heat coming from the xenon lights and I guess LED is the thing most people do....

Anyway, I'm not much of a DIYer, so I want something that I can just hand the contractor (referred from my KD, by the way) and they will know what to do.

I just called Environmental Lights and told them how many cabinets I will need to light under and they put a bunch of stuff in a cart for me that totals $580 (not sure whether or not shipping is included). They are the LED High Brightness lights and include diffusers, power source, dimmer switch, and some connectors (though maybe I would need more).

That's an awfully big price difference.... It seems like people on this forum seem to like Environmental Lights. I don't want to spend $700 extra that I don't need to spend for the same thing.... Is there something I'm missing here?

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Comments (5)

lazyjane75
Original Author
10 years ago
By the way, I don't have a layout handy, but if this helps, the cabinets are on three walls. These are the upper cabs on each wall:

Wall 1: 2 - 20" cabs, separated by window.
Wall 2: 1 - 39" cab + a corner cabinet (extends 12" out)
Wall 3: 12" corner cabinet + 12" cabinet + 2 34" cabinets (separated by range hood).

So, in total, there would be 7 upper cabinets that I'd need lights under, including one corner cabinet where the Environmental Lights sales person proposed 2 6" lights connected together.
eleena
10 years ago
Have you checked the Lighting Forum?
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andreak100
10 years ago
We bought from Environmental Lights. We are not installed yet, so I can't give real life experience with using them..we also got the high brightness ones, with dimmable power supply, diffusers, etc.

They were pleasant to deal with and our product came quickly...if only I could get the contractors to work as quickly as the product arrived. *sigh*

I felt comfortable buying from them based on other's experience here.
Eric Freedman
10 years ago
We used environmental lights. Very easy to deal with. I covered as much lineal footage as I could. Lights work great at brightest setting. We do have them on a dimmer, they tend to flicker a little when set on the low side.. Not hard to install at all. Good luck.
fouramblues
10 years ago
We bought from EL and would do it again. But I have one caveat: our lighting designer said that what you lose with the lower cost lights is quality control, and our experience seems to confirm this. The color temp of our UCLs is not consistent - one section is noticeably warmer, but close enough that it doesn't bother me anymore. We had a similar experience with our cove ceiling lighting (from another budget friendly company), but had to buy a replacement section as the color variation was intolerable.