Kitchen / Lamps - Kichler Design Pro LED Lighting

In New York City, kitchen windows are a rare luxury.

My current kitchen has no windows - just one overhead light fixture (where I use CFL bulbs, naturally). Most of the time, this lighting is just fine, but there are occasions when I'm chopping vegetables for dinner when I feel like I should be holding a flashlight in my teeth to make sure that I don't chop off any body parts along with the onions.

It's times like these when I think that under cabinet lights would come in handy. If I did have under-cabinet lights, I would want them to have the attributes of Kichler's new Design Pro series introduced earlier this year.

The LED lights in the Design Pro series provide more than 40,000 hours of illumination (20+ years of typical usage) while using as little as 4-watts of energy.

And if you're worried that LED lighting will give your food a blue hue and make you lose your appetite, Kichler says not to fret. The Design Pro series uses LED chips that emit a softer, whiter light than past generations of LED technology.

Kichler claims that the Design Pro series has the smallest profile in the industry (just a half-inch), making it easy to hide the lights under any cabinet. Fixtures snap together to enable seamless lighting under multiple cabinets.

Of course, energy efficiency is one of the main reasons to go with LED lights. Each six inches of Design Pro lighting use just four watts of electricity. (Kichler Design Pro lights come in 6, 12 and 18-inch lengths that use 4, 8 and 12-watts of electricity respectively.)

LED lights may not quite as efficient as having a window in your kitchen, but here in Brooklyn, they're probably about as good as it gets.

Where to buy:
Use Kichler's website to find a dealer near you.