Over Kitchen Sink Lighting: How To Enlighten and Brighten Your Cooking Space
As kitchens are amongst the most functional rooms in all modern Australian homes, it’s imperative that the fixtures, layout, and appliances in your kitchen space support the way that your household manages mealtimes and food preparation.
One particular facet of kitchen design that many tend to overlook, however, is your over kitchen sink lighting. Each individual workstation in your kitchen space deserves adequate, but our kitchen sink set-ups tend to be a bit of a challenge to cater to when compared to more open workstations.
So how exactly do you find the optimal over kitchen sink lighting to suit your kitchen space? We’ll be looking at four of the most common forms of kitchen sink lighting and evaluating what kinds of kitchen environments they may work best in to help you with your own personal kitchen design project.
Undercabinet lighting
If you have a more compact kitchen space in a smaller property - like a unit or apartment, for instance -, then chances are high that your kitchen sink set-up may be placed under overhead cabinetry, with additional floor-level cabinets installed on either side of the cabinet that can be found under your kitchen sink.
If your kitchen sink is embedded into your kitchen’s arrangement of cabinets rather than having its own allocated area, then the best method of ensuring that your kitchen sink set-up stays well-lit is simply by installing undercabinet lighting.
As you could imagine, undercabinet lighting basically involves installing lights directly in the base of your overhead kitchen cabinets, essentially allowing you to illuminate your kitchen sink set-up without having to rely on ceiling lighting.
Your undercabinet lights can either be fluorescents or even LED downlights that are placed evenly apart to ensure that the illumination of your kitchen sink set-up is nice and uniform.
Undercabinet lighting is particularly valuable for larger or longer kitchen sink set-ups that utilise a double bowl kitchen sink design over a single bowl design. Our Orlando 1125 x 450 Double Bowl Kitchen Sink with its accompanying drainboard is a perfect example of a kitchen sink that may be best lit using undercabinet lighting, due to the sink model’s longer size.
Orlando 1125 x 450 Double Bowl Kitchen Sink
Perfect as kitchen sink or laundry trough
Recessed lighting
Unlike undercabinet lighting, traditional recessed lighting is generally installed right into the ceiling of your kitchen, providing even illumination across the entirety of your kitchen space.
This is a highly versatile form of over kitchen sink lighting that’s most commonly used in many Australian homes, but particularly so in homes that boast open floor plans.
The main benefit of recessed lighting for your open kitchen space is that you can ensure an even distribution of light throughout not just your kitchen but to other interior spaces throughout your home, which is particularly perfect for kitchens that are connected or adjacent to your family’s dining space.
Alongside this, recessed lighting is perfect for kitchens with a variety of different benchtops or workstations that may all need to receive an equal level of illumination to keep your kitchen design as uniform as possible.
Let’s say, for instance, that you’re looking to install an Ella Corner Double Bowl Sink , one of our most unique but still undeniably versatile kitchen sink models available here at BuildMat.
Ella Corner Double Bowl Sink
Exterior coating to prevent condensation
Installing recessed lighting will ensure that even your Ella Corner Double Bowl Sink receives just as much illumination as all the central workstations that make up your kitchen space.
Recessed lighting may also be perfect for effectively illuminating darker toned kitchen sinks, like our Brushed Gunmetal Avisa 700 x 450 Large Bowl Sink .
Brushed Gunmetal Avisa 700 x 450 Large
65 litre capacity
Pendant lighting
If your kitchen sink set-up consists of a single bowl kitchen sink and a single kitchen mixer, then installing pendant lighting right above your kitchen sink can provide your wider kitchen space with a touch of elegant symmetry.
Pendant lighting also makes for a vibrant and enigmatic focal point in contemporary modern kitchen spaces, that are generally characterised by their toned down or monochromatic colour schemes, and smooth, handle-free cabinets.
Finding the perfect pendant light to suit your kitchen will likely involve assessing the colour palette and design style of your wider kitchen space, and looking for any pendants that align with these existing design elements.
For instance, if you have a copper kitchen mixer like our Ashanti Brushed Copper Gooseneck Mixer , then a copper or even rose gold pendant light may make a superb addition to your kitchen sink set-up.
Ashanti Brushed Copper Gooseneck Mixer
Ceramic cartridge disk
Pendant lighting can also be utilised in smaller kitchen spaces like butler’s kitchens to cultivate an illusion of space alongside also adding effortless class and luxury depending on what kind of pendant light design you land on.
If you have a smaller kitchen sink like our Jeeves 300 x 400 Single Bowl Butler Kitchen Sink , a well-placed pendant light may help to ensure that both your kitchen sink set-up as well as surrounding countertop spaces also stay well-lit, boosting the overall functionality of your smaller kitchen space.
Jeeves 300 x 400 Single Bowl
Skinny Mini Sink
Multi-lamp lighting
If you have a larger kitchen sink set-up in a similarly larger-sized kitchen space, then a single source of light may not be the way to go. What if you’re not a fan of recessed lighting either? Well, thankfully there is one option that’s left for you, and it’s a highly popular one amongst seasoned interior designers: multi-lamp lighting.
Multi-lamp lighting set-ups basically consist of a number of pendant lights all working together to create a kind of ecosystem of hanging light fixtures. Multi-lamp lighting arrangements basically have the great potential of being a work of art in themselves, so long as you select your arrangement carefully and take additional steps to ensure that your lighting arrangement doesn’t make your kitchen space look or feel crowded.
Because they demand such a high consideration for balance in your kitchen’s interior design scheme, multi-lamp lighting arrangements naturally aren’t suited for all kinds of kitchen spaces.
They do tend to feel most natural in larger kitchens, however, but with a bit of intuitive designing, you can make a multi-lamp lighting arrangement work in small kitchen spaces as well.
Multi-lamp lighting arrangements can help add an additional touch of luxury to statement kitchen sinks like our Brushed Brass Gold Madison 775 x 450 Double Bowl Sink .
Brushed Brass Gold Madison 775 x 450
X-Shaped Fall Design to Central waste
Simply installing gold-detailed sconces or even a pair of small chandeliers directly over the Brushed Brass Gold Madison Sink can help elevate your kitchen sink set-up, transforming an everyday cooking space into an asset for any avid host.
Although the kitchen lighting styles that we’ve outlined above have been paired with select kinds of kitchen set-ups in our own exploration, it’s well worth noting that modern homeowners can feel encouraged to experiment with different kitchen lighting designs and layouts themselves in order to get a feel of what works best for them and their wider kitchen space.
Want to learn more about our selection of kitchen sinks, mixers, and modern kitchen accessories? Browse through our extensive collection of quality stainless steel kitchen sinks today, or get in touch with our friendly team for more information on any of the products we stock here at BuildMat .
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