Which do you prefer? Some people hate, loathe, detest cfls. I'm guessing you're not in that group if you're asking. It's a very personal preference.

I ended up replacing my old fluorescent lights with new florescent low profiles. I did this for two reasons. One- the nimrods who originally put in the existing light fixtures did not center them and you couldn't tell until the lights were down, and I didn't want to deal with that issue along with everything else that is going on. =(

Two- I was worried I would not be able to replace the overhead brightness of the fluorescent with just incandescent.

I ended up with bright white bulbs which I find to be sufficient but to be honest I didn't give it much thought at the time. I have added incandescent wall sconces to the kitchen and hope when they finally get installed it balances out the light quality even when I have to switch to cfl's. Sorry I'm not much help but I'm not sure if you meant lighting in general or just the bulbs! =)

Would you like to dim the light? I don't believe florescent lighting is dimmable. I went with incandescent so I can dim my light and I am very happy with my choice. I have a small kitchen. In the future I hope there will be LED bulbs available that will be dimmable for use in my fixture. We will see what the future holds.

CFLs can be had in light colors that are indistinguishable from incandescent - for most people. Not for everyone. You might buy a couple of CFLs (100w equivalent, in ''warm'') and put them in a lamp, live with it awhile, and see what you think.

A few more considerations: dimmable CFLs do not work (my experience as of 1 year ago), they don't give the old-timey ''glowing filament'' look that is important for some period fixtures that use exposed bulbs, and you don't want to buy super-cheap ones (the electronics don't seem to last). Most (all?) CFLs take a few minutes to reach full brightness, not usually a big deal in a kitchen but maybe a factor in a closet. You'll read scare stories about the mercury in a broken CFL contaminating your house, it is really not an issue presuming you don't get down on your knees and snort up like its a line of coke, just sweep it up like a normal person and go about your business. You may also read scare environmental stories about that mercury contaminating the earth, also a red herring since the reduced electricity consumed reduces mercury by more that the bulb contains (coal burning generates most of the mercury pollution in this country).

I use CFLs everywhere in the house except where I need a dimmer. They are fine, and I replace 1 or 2 a year (out of at least 50) instead of constantly changing incandescents. I've broken 1 in 5 years, no horns or tail yet.

That said, LEDs will replace CFLs in 5 years or so, when the price and performance improve. You'll be able to get screw base LEDs so no reason to defer your remodel . . .

If you are asking about tube fluorescent lights, I can't help much. I have them in the basement, and they will stay there. Buzz and flicker, I don't like.

My biggest problem with CFL lights is the humming that I hear. I also hear the humming if incandescents are on dimmers (dimmed down). I have very acute hearing and no one else in the house hears it. Obviously, if there is alot going on in the room, I do not hear it. When things are quiet, I hear the humming, and I can't stand it!

To my eye, 60 watt equivalent CFL is not as bright as 60 watt incandescnt. I would say there is 10 to 20% reduction in how the lights feel. I do have some CFLs. But I am waiting for the LEDs to reduce in price....

Because of California law I had to get fluorescents. Normal ones bug my eyes. I got a lighting designer who had sheaths made for them, and found fancy non-buzzy ones. The sheaths make the color temperature much closer to actual sunlight.

Fluorescent light, sheathed or not, is a wash light. Incandescent is much sharper. I much prefer it for that reason. I have some low wattage halogens on the perimeter that make it a lot easier to see at night for things like baking because of the sharpness.

I do not like CFLs. I dislike them so much that I am intending on stockpiling incandescent fixtures that are being phased out!

In 2011, fluorescents can be found that produce excellent or very good lighting. Search in the lighting forum for "CRI", color rendition index. ( Or, cri+fluorescent ). The terms " soft white, bright white or daylight " are not precise enough. They bring back old memories of the days when fluorescents were low quality.

At the very least, you should all start asking for the CRI whenever you see a bulb in a store. People who like the kitchen forum should also go to the lighting forum. Ask all the nice people, whose usernames you like, to go keep company with you over there.

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" main lighting in kitchen" = what is that?

Since the kitchen is a workplace / laboratory, we need lots of light on the countertops and then only secondarily do we need some ambiance lighting in other areas.

So far nobody has mentioned thin tube fluorescents, not CFL.

>In 2011, fluorescents can be found that produce excellent or very good lighting.

I hear this constantly and I've spent a small fortune checking it out, and IMHO it's just not true. Fluorescent lighting looks like fluorescent lighting, regardless of the kelvin temperature.

Just to follow up on davidro's comment, there is a range of ''color temperatures'', usually expressed in K. This higher the K value, the ''bluer / colder'' the light, the lower the K value value, the ''yellower / warmer'' the light.

The sun at high noon is 5500-6500 K.

Photographic flashes are designed to be 5500 K, most photographers' tungsten photo floodlighting is around 3200 K. Film (remember that? it ain't dead!) meant for outdoor use is balanced for 5500 K, film meant for indoor is balanced for 3200 K.

Incandescent bulbs are around 2500-3500 K, that is a much warmer, yellower color than sunlight. The only warmer color light we typically see is a candle, around 1800 K. Or, if anyone has time anymore, a sunset. I remember sunsets.

CFLs are made in various color temperatures. "Daylight" CFLs are around 5000-6500 K to simulate sunlight, and ''warm'' or ''soft'' CFLs are around 2700-3500 K to simulate incandescent. So when people come home with ''daylight'' CFLs, they find the light color colder than they are used to with incandescents. They bought the wrong CFLs.

Then again, in regions where we care about S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder), people sometimes choose bulbs of 5000+ K to simulate sunlight.

If you ever grew plants indoors using grow lights, they are typically sun-like temperatures, 5000-6500 K. If you used incandescents, the plants grew tall and spindly, without much leaf.

I don't know about ''CRI'', I'm only familiar with K (Kelvin).

LED's have gotten affordable and dimmable. Check out the Cree CR6 if you are looking at cans.

They came out just after I got my CREE LR6.

I love the bright warm LED lights.

Here is a link that might be useful: CREE CR6

I have the ugly fluorescent tube light panels in my kitchen ceiling, but they're unobtrusive, and I'm happy with them as a light source (in the kitchen only). IMO, they're one of the best ways to easily get a whole lot of bright light. I'm sensitive to light & sunlight, so the wash of bright light first thing in the morning is a necessity! Overkill for other rooms, but I tend to like my kitchen well lit over ambient.

I'm sure my current bulbs are the cheap economy bulbs, but I purchased some GE Kitchen & Bath bulbs that I'll get around to installing one of these days. The K&B bulbs are supposed to make food and skin tones look more appealing...we'll see.

Recessed lights and pendants are incandescent. I rarely use the cans. Under cabinet lights are thin tube fluorescents. I use them everyday ... all day.

We also are in CA and had to do CFLs and I'm actually surprised by how much I like them (and how few people realize they're fluorescent---only the inspector said "Oh, okay, fluorescent" when I turned them on, but most everyone else thinks we put them in after getting our permit finaled). We have CFLs throughout the house and have had mixed experiences, and I'd say the big factors are:

1) Get good quality bulbs. We needed high wattage (150W equivalent) in the special GU24 socket, so I had to custom order them from a specialty place for far more than I'd ever spent on lightbulbs ($25 each or something??), but the bulbs are so much better than the cheap ones we get at the hardware store---no buzzing! Steady light! They still take a few seconds to warm up to full light, but I think that's just a fluorescent thing. But they are worlds above the other CFLs in the house, which are a mix of super cheap bulbs and Philips bulbs (which I bought to see if "expensive" bulbs were better, back before I knew what "expensive bulbs" meant!)

2) Color temperature. I did lots of research on this and got 2700K bulbs, which aren't too different from the incandescents in the room (a little whiter vs. yellower). You can see the difference, but people don't notice it unless I turn them on at the same time for comparison.

3) Opaque shades---ours are schoolhouse fixtures, and it diffuses the light so it's a lot less harsh than traditional fluorescent fixtures with tubes.

We didn't get fluorescent dimmers because the other fixtures in our house are dimmers and I *hate* the CFL dimmable bulbs, but learned afterwards that you can get dimmable light fixtures and switches that are designed for fluorescent and supposedly don't have these problems to the same degree that retrofitted conventional fixtures do. I have no idea if this is actually true or not. I expected to use the fixtures with the incandescents a lot, though (designed to double some of what the overhead lighting covered, and provide task lighting) but am surprised to find that I only turn them on once a week a most. We use only the fluorescents for general lighting, and it gets just about all of the counters with more than enough light to work by. I end up using the incandescents mainly to leave a low light on if we're going out or someone's coming home late.

If you're in California, incandescent lighting is strictly controlled by title 24 - no more than 1/2 the wattage can be used for incandescents.

I had a recessed fluorescent light box which was replaced by LR6 lamps in recessed light cans when I raised the ceiling. The Cree LR6 is a very good lamp - no spotlight cone of light or glare compared to CFL cans.

In addition, they are dimmable.
The price was in the same ball park as CFL cans.

The UC lighting is led 3500k which is used more often.

Under cabinet alone

I got the GU24 bulbs and ordered them from Rejuvenation with my fixtures. I didn't feel like researching light bulbs and just assumed they'd sell me the ones that looked good. They do look good, come on almost instantly, and nobody knows they are odd.

I've had some experimental pre-production LEDs that screw into incandescent sockets and I guess they'll be here soon.
If you select fixtures that don't have exposed bulbs, you can always rewire them with new sockets in the future.

(OT, Davidtay, how do you like the oven on that range?)

Adding to what I said above:

Mine are the thin fluorescents that don't buzz, except in the laundry, where I have fat tubes, also with sheaths, also the non-buzzy type.

The sheathed color temperature is 2700K, but there are a number of bulbs working together so there's plenty of light (3 fat tubes in laundry, 8 thin tubes in main kitchen fixture, and 5 thin tubes in the light over the island, plus LED u/c's, and 35W halogens around the perimeter and over the sink--I still don't see how having to put in so much lighting saves electricity...). I've also seen fluorescent lamps that were supposed to be color adjusted to 2700 but I wasn't happy with the color.

I had a friend come into my new kitchen and ask why it looked like it was outside. It was the color of the light. :)

5500-6500K is often described as "daylight", but it's a very grey-white, sharp light. It might be daylight somewhere, or it might be the kind that makes me cringe when I walk outside and close my eyes, which we don't get all that often, but it's nothing like the warm, yellow sunlight we have here most of the time. Probably something to do with moisture in the upper atmosphere or something. I was crying over Title 24 and planning illegal incandescent retrofits before I found the lighting designer with the sheaths. :)

Seen on the gelighting.com site:

Color Rendering Index (CRI)
61 -70
71 - 80
81 - 90

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I know enough to know that the CRI is a better measure of the quality of the light, than the K (temperature). I don't know how to explain it well enough to withstand parsing, criticism and rewrites.

Lighting info makes my head swim for some reason. All I know is that my fluorescent overhead light in the kitchen (14 yrs old) seems to put out a cold, dull light (especially at night). It's a bug catcher, and a pain to clean it out. The cans do seem to have a more ambient look, and with the money that people spend on kitchens, I'd say ambience is probably, atleast a little important (even if it's hard to admit). It also seems that the cans are better at lighting different areas, where my large overhead leaves the outer areas dim. I may just need a newer type of bulb, as I'm sure they make them now. I appreciate sharing info on this subject, even if I don't always know about all that is out there now.

Lake_ Girl, you are so right about your statement: "All I know is that my fluorescent overhead light in the kitchen (14 yrs old) seems to put out a cold, dull light (especially at night). It's a bug catcher, and a pain to clean it out." I have this same light and it changes the color of everything and distorts it and I hate it especially all those bugs! I am ready to finally change out my lighting so I am trying to do research on the size cans I need and what type of bulb I would be happy with that gives a nice white light. Thank you and everything else for sharing.