Helpful Information:
- Functionality
- Our cabinet lights come in a variety of sizes, lamp wattages, and with a variety of light sources. With different lights cabinets can be well lit and provide a focal point in a room. Cabinet lighting can make a china cabinet, a curio case, or a hutch look a little more attractive while providing pleasant accent lighting to the contents of the cabinet.
- The light provided by a cabinet light can be used to light an attractive vase, sculpture, framed photo, piece of china, curio, or crystal. Cabinet lighting has the ability to give both a professional look and the look of warmth by providing another "layer of light" to the entire space. The lighting chosen depends on the feel desired. For example, curio cabinet lighting works best with warmer light tones. Portable cabinet lighting might benefit more from cooler tones.
- When lighting the inside of a cabinet, it is important for inside cabinet lighting to produce less heat since they are typically placed within a closed space. All of the LED and fluorescent light fixtures give off very little heat. In addition, all of the fluorescent cabinet light fixtures turn on instantly with no flickering (flicker-free) since they all have instant start electronic ballasts. The xenon (pronounced ze-non) light fixtures are hotter than the fluorescent and LED cabinet lights but are still cooler than halogen light fixtures.
- Light Sources
- Cabinet lights may use LED, xenon, halogen, fluorescent, or traditional incandescent light sources. Any of these light sources might provide a good deal of light, a modest amount of light, or just a hint of light. It is sometimes a good idea to control the lighting with a dimmer switch since this can provide a good deal of lighting flexibility. This cannot usually be done with fluorescent light sources but fluorescent lighting is still considered one of the more energy-efficient in providing a given amount of light. Fluorescent light sources are also the coolest of all the light sources. This property can be extremely important in some instances depending on what is stored in the cabinet. Considering the right light source is equally important when it comes to portable cabinet lighting.
- Some people are only looking for cabinet light fixtures that produce light similar to incandescent. All of the xenon and halogen light fixtures ARE, in fact, incandescent light sources. These lights use light bulbs with either a little bit of xenon or halogen gas introduced into the glass envelope to help lengthen the life of the lamp. Therefore, all the xenon and halogen light fixtures produce the familiar warm glow low color temperature of an incandescent light bulb. If the LED or fluorescent light fixture has a low color temperature of 3200K or lower, like a warm white fluorescent light bulb in a fluorescent fixture, then it, too, will look very much like an incandescent light bulb.
- Installation
- At the bottom of each cabinet light product page's Description tab you will see an "Installation Difficulty" graphic that looks like the one below. We rank the ease of installing our kitchen cabinet lighting products from 1 "wrench", very easy, to 5 "wrenches", will take some time or patience or professional expertise. We tend to be a bit conservative with our estimates of difficulty. That is, we would rather judge a product to be a little more difficult to install than you might so that you will not be disappointed with the time that it takes to install a particular model of inside cabinet lighting.
-
- 1 Wrench - It doesn't get any easier than this
2 Wrenches - Pretty easy
3 Wrenches - Somewhat easy
4 Wrenches - Requires some effort but not a great deal of effort
5 Wrenches - Will take some time or patience or professional expertise
- A nice feature for many of our in cabinet lighting fixtures are that they can be linked together. This means that two light fixtures can be easily connected electrically by simply plugging in a Flexible Connector into the two fixtures. More than two "linkable" fixtures can be linked in one long line of fixtures.
- Electrical Power
- Some of our kitchen cabinet lighting fixtures receive power by plugging a cord and plug into the nearest electrical receptacle while others are hardwired to power. To "hardwire" a light fixture means to connect it electrically by using a non-metallic sheathed electrical wire.
- In addition, we also offer both line voltage and low voltage cabinet light fixtures. Any light fixture that uses the available voltage (usually 120 volts) directly and does NOT use a transformer to step down the voltage from line voltage to low voltage (12 volts or 24 volts) is considered to be a line voltage fixture. A low voltage fixture uses a transformer so that the light bulbs operate on 12 volts or 24 volts. The transformer may be located inside the kitchen low voltage lighting fixture or it may be located outside the fixture at a "remote" location. Kitchen low voltage lighting is particularly useful since it uses energy more efficiently.
- Looking to have your cabinet lights installed so that a group of them can be controlled by one wall light switch? Most of our cabinet lights may be controlled in this manner as long as they are hardwired to power during installation.
- Written by Chris Johnson
|
Learn More About Our Cabinet Lights
Sign up for our 
