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Don’t let the design of your kitchen be undermined by the shadows, light it up in the ways we describe here.

To say lighting is important is to condense the musings of all artists and designers into a single point of agreement that everyone can subscribe to. Light not only beautifies a space, but in a space as vital — and potentially chaotic — as the kitchen, light also serves as a practical consideration of safety and comfort.

The pre-eminent architect who revolutionised the use of reinforced concrete and open floor plans, Charles-Édouard “Le Corbusier” Jeanneret, described light’s importance most aptly when nominating space, illumination, and order as being equally important as food and sleep in sustaining life. If you’ve planned and configured fixtures in the kitchen to your heart’s content, now would be the time we look into lighting the scene.

Natural Beauty

To paraphrase the words of the late twentieth-century architect, Michael Graves: even panoramic beachfront views can become tiresome, but sunlight streaming into a room never gets old. In the insulated environments of modern convention, surrounded by tinted glass and blackout drapery, the powerful effects of sunlight often go under-appreciated. Yong Studio defies modern convention by opening up the pictured all-white kitchen to the skies with generous windows, appointing them with thin roller blinds to tame the glare of the tropical sun.

Layers of Light

Just as memorable works of art present nuanced blends of light and shadow, a well-lit kitchen requires multiple overlapping sources of light to colour the space, make manual tasks easier, and call attention to decorative features. In the pictured scene, Nine Plus Interior Design demonstrates an example of ideal lighting balance: the smooth white surfaces amplify the soft ambient lighting from the ceiling and the sunlit windows — widening the perception of this relatively compact space, while a hidden strip of light simultaneously draws the eye to the tiled backsplash and makes working on the countertops safer for fast-paced chefs.

Tip: Light is a notoriously temperamental subject to control, but with a model bulb and accompanying lampshade one can go about testing effects while meticulously composing a visual scene as film directors do.

Air of Elegance

With all of one’s attention paid towards ensuring practical task lighting and orchestrating dramatic accent lighting, the consideration of subtle ambient lighting sometimes gets overlooked. Wide gaps between lighting sources contribute towards a darker space with the presence of shadows—but as demonstrated by JCS Design in the pictured kitchen—the addition of ambient lighting elevates the potential gloom to a soft sheen, providing for a considerably safer environment in which to manoeuvre around while handling hot cookery and cutting utensils.

Accent Aesthetics

Even the most simplistic of spaces rendered monochromatic can be given a surprising measure of depth and dimension with the strategic placement of just a few accent lighting fixtures. With attention diverted to decorative features, a scene divides itself—with subtle elements shifting into background and highlighted features moving into the foreground of the composition. Nu Infinity imbues the pictured kitchen with depth by highlighting and transporting the wooden surface of the island counter to the visual foreground—using only a handful of hanging pendant lamps composed from a quality of wood to match and emphasise the island’s wooden surface.

Tip: As with the preparation of any dish or concoction, adding more of a particular ingredient will provide greater emphasis for that particular flavour. In decorative terms, the preferred characteristics of a décor can be reinforced with the restrained sprinkling of a favoured texture, material, or colour.