Lighting Up Modern Kitchen Cabinets

Kitchen cabinet lighting functions like the fridge in some modern cabinets.

Many European kitchen cabinet line combine tempered glass and LED technology to produce extremely bright light inside drawers and cupboards. Open a drawer and the lights go on, making everything inside more accessible. The LED (light emitting diode) illumination remains cool because the technology produces light rather than heat. It also uses very little electricity.  Back in 2010, I featured the kitchen cabinet lighting in the Valcucine line on display at a home show. The “future feature” of 2010 is here and that extends to the bathroom, where Robern’s lighted bathroom vanity drawers are an excellent, similar, option. Listen, I adore my 10-year old traditional Shaker door maple cabinets and the pull outs help me see inside. But my next kitchen will be all lit up! And my bath will be too. I’m still hoping to convert my ceiling fixtures to LED compatible switches and dimmers. Meanwhile, my post on Table Lamp Light Bulb Intelligence explained what I used for those throughout the house.

In England, Leicht kitchen cabinets [top] have storage drawers with built-in LED lighting. Drawers can vary in height and inserts made of wood, plastic or glass may be added to help with organization.

The Kalea line of Italy’s Cesar cabinets offers 4000K (daylight) LED lighting in drawers segmented for cutlery and dishware storage.

A glass-box wine storage and display unit is cleverly built onto the end of a kitchen cabinet wall. Glittering lighting from above and below illuminates the collection of bottles which are kept at the proper temperature by means of an air conditioner. Before LED, which remains cool enough to touch, this kitchen cabinet lighting arrangement would have been harmful to the wine. While I might question the wisdom of installing wine storage on a cabinet adjacent to an oven, the idea is unique enough to be a showpiece. And the glass box, built out on the end of the cabinets, is constructed like a shower enclosure.

Alno Light Wood cabinets can be fitted with Hafele frosted-glass and aluminum tambour upper doors. Interior puck lights high up in the cabinets illuminate the elegant interior glass shelves as well as the matte glass doors that glide up and out of the way.

(Source: leichtcontracts, cesar, idea-construcciones, alno)

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