This used to be the track light in our kitchen. Once, it had 4 lights on it, but light number 4 gave up the ghost and just wouldn’t work, no matter how many new lightbulbs we got for it. Light #3 was in about the same place at the end of December, and we decided that the fixture just didn’t meet our needs any more. To work in the kitchen and have enough light you had to turn on that fixture, the living room light, the light over the sink, and the light over the stove. Not so you could see the sink or the stove, but so there would be enough light to see the counter properly.
At the very end of December we went down to Home Depot and bought this for ourselves:
There are more of them, there’s a wider span, they’re brighter, and the white glass shades help it give off a great light. Plus, it looks a lot nicer!
P is a lighting technician and designer, so a lot of thought went in to exactly which light would point where. Part of the problem was that that fixture is centred over the space between the island and the counter, not the counter itself. That meant that when you stand at the island (kneading bread/icing cupcakes/chopping veg) the light was coming from behind you and casting a nice head-and-shoulders-shaped shadow on your dough/icing/knife. Not ideal. With the length of this track, we had room to point the light you see in the far right of the photo at the left side of the island as you see it, and the far left left at the right side of the island. Now when I stand at the island, the light is coming from such an angle that I don’t cast a shadow on it. We also put a light in the centre of the track and pointed that directly as the island, but with the fill from the two angled lights, my shadow isn’t a problem.
Applying lighting design at home!







































