Dimmable lighting over & under cabinets

PaulD

Active Member
Looking for a non florescent solution for lighting over and under kitchen cabinets in my new house. Lights would often be dimmed via UPB but would also be at 100% some of the time. I told my builder I wanted dimmable lighting in those locations and would probably want to use halogen in that application. He discouraged me from doing that because of the heat generated by halogens. Has anyone else used halogen in that situation and found that heat was a problem? I was also thinking about rope lights at the top of the cabinets as an alternative but I am not sure if they would work under the cabinets. Any other solutions?
 
I'm using Xenon lights under our kitchen cabinets. They work well. Not as hot as Halogen. You just need to be sure to get the dimmable transformers.

I thought that there were some dimmable LEDs now. But haven't checked in a while.
 
You might want to do a search for ESL light bulbs that are dimmable.

I'm still looking for online stores that sell those kinds of bulbs.
 
I use rope lighting under my cabinets, and halogen lighting. The rope lighting looks great, and is dimmable (automatically comes on when sun sets, and turn off when good night sequence is started). It is more used as accent lighting tho. It lights up really well, but doesn't compare to halogen. The halogens I have are extremely hot (typical Home Depot kit), and I actually want to get rid of them because of this. I am looking for bright and 'cool' under the cabinet lights as well, so if you do find something good, please let me know.
 
I know this subject was brought up before, because I had the same questions about under cabinet lighting when our builder wanted some ridiculous amount of money to put it in....so I just put in a switched outlet above each cabinet section so I could run my own. But I know there's a thread in these forums where this is discussed more in depth, and I believe Dan also there suggested the rope lighting and made me a convert. There's links there to various manufacturers, I believe. Don't have time to search for the thread, but it's somewhere around here...
 
I find the rope lights over the cabinets make nice accent lighting, but aren't useful for any kind of task. The xenons under the cabinets melt chocolate chips even at half power. Best task lighting we've had in any kitchen, though.
 
We have under cabinet halogens, they dim well and look great but they are warm/hot. You don't want to put the butter right under them. It bugs my wife more than me because she would rather not work around the 'hotspots'.
 
Heh! Speaking of rope lights, I'm thinking about starting my own project! A headboard with rope lights!

P1010915.jpg


Source: http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=prod...&lpage=none

That'd be great to hook it up to an Insteon LampLinc that I have.

Well, anyway, back to kitchen lighting, specifically undercabinets/overcabnets.

I'm thinking about doing a simple rope light for an undercabinet.
 
Paul, I wrestled with the same thing 4 years ago when we redid our kitchen. I had the same set of requirements. At the end of the day we did go back to fluorescent. We use these fixtures. We found that xenon and halogens were either too hot or did not have good coverage. We wanted a uniform look the length of the counter (on both top and bottom) and the fluorescent were best at that. But they are instant on, no flicker and I used T8 'daylight bulbs' so that food, etc always had the best realistic color. Granted they do not dim but I have the tops come on automatically and this not only gives a good look but also enough light so in most circumstances I don't need to turn on main recessed lights, or if I do only very dim. The under counter ones only really get turned on when light is needed there. Ropes are also nice but too dim imho for when you really need the light, plus its hard to find a high quality natural light in ropes.

You could also always do a combo depending on what you are trying to achieve. If you want ambiance and good task light to work by maybe do both rope and fluorescent. Have the ropes on for you ambiance and when you need the task lights turn on the fluorescent (and link the ropes to go off).

Anyway, those fixtures worked well for us and there is no heat at all. I did look at many of the others in the stores and there was definitely heat coming off them. Anyway, good luck.
 
I thought that there were some dimmable LEDs now. But haven't checked in a while.

Something like this?


The problem with these is that it's transformer as PaulD called it is actually a AC-DC power supply/converter. These will not work as you drop the input voltage the power supply will still output the required output dc voltage until you are out of it's operating range and it turns off... What would work is if you can find a linear (aka: non-switcher power supply... this would allow the DC voltage to reduce linearly with the input reduction.) But most likely not going to find a LED light system which can do this not at a reasonable cost at least.
 
The transformer is the key. The Xenon units I got had a dimmable transformer available. And they work perfectly with my UPB switches. Smooth dimming through the full range. And they are no where near as hot as Halogen.

That LED unit would be interesting if it had the dimmable transformer and if it were about a third the price ;)
 
My research so far indicates I have 2 choices for dimmable line voltage...Halogen and Xenon with Xenon being the cooler running of those 2 options. Xenon can be found in both low voltage and line voltage however, the low voltage units seem to be much more common. The line voltage units can be dimmed by any standard dimmer that works by controling the voltage. Since I expect the units to be operating at something less than 100% most of the time, the heat should be a bit lower most of the time.
If anyone has any experience with the dimmable line voltage version of the Xenon lights, I would like your opinions on how well they work.
 
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