Kitchen Track Lighting: Planning For Your New Home

It is a good time to think about kitchen track lighting when you are building a new home. You can make all the choices and have your builder or contractors do all the work. It only takes a little thought about how you will plan your tracks and fixtures.

When you first get set up with a builder or contractor, lighting may be the last thing on your mind. Your architect, on the other hand, will be interested in all your construction ideas for your house. Lighting tracks for the kitchen will no doubt be included in the engineering drawings.

You must tell the architect just where you want the track lighting to go in your kitchen. If you describe an area where you want track lighting on the ceiling, the architect might simply draw it in there.

Your architect might look at it and tell you that it will not work. You could be putting your track too far from the object you want to light, for example. You cannot count on the architect to make all these decisions for you, but you might get some advice.

Layered Lighting

One specific topic you might discuss with your designer/architect would be light layering. This means having different kinds of light coming together in the room. You will discuss what lighting you will use for ambient light, for task light, and for accent light.

After you specify to your architect where you want your kitchen tract lighting, you will still have to deal with the builder or contractor. When your house is being built, it is time to really get to the bottom of things and figure out exactly what will work and what will not.

This is the time to tell your builder about any special after-building lighting additions that you want to make. Under-counter track lighting is one example. It is not a part of the house plan, but it may be important to your vision of how the house will look.

Selecting The Fixtures

You will also have to choose tracks and fixtures. You can leave the technical details up to the builder. The builder often has a book of fixtures to view. All you have to do is choose the fixtures you like and the builder will try to see that you get the set-up you need to have them.

You might want small halogen track heads for a track on the ceiling that is to light up the top of the cabinets. For the under-counter lights, you could go with small pendant track lights or cones. For a track over a kitchen island, you might want larger pendants. No one else will choose your fixtures for you, so you have to do this job yourself.

Kitchen track lighting offers variety in tracks, fixtures, and uses that you do not see anywhere else in the house. It takes a lot of planning to get the kitchen you want. You will have help, of course, but the ultimate choices will be up to you. In the end, patience, research, and decisiveness pay off.