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Kitchen Lighting Design: Where the Pot Lights Go, How High the Island Pendants Hang, the Under-Cabinet Rough-In and What It Costs in Ontario
Electrical & Lighting
Kitchen Lighting: Light the Counter, Not the Back of Your Head
A lot of kitchens have a tidy grid of pot lights centred over the floor and somebody standing at the counter in their own shadow. The kitchen is the one room where lighting is a work tool, and where the wiring has to be decided before the cabinets are built. This page is the kitchen only: the pot lights, the pendants, the under-cabinet wire, the switches and the cost. Layers, colour temperature and CRI in general are on the LED lighting page, and room-by-room rough-in planning is on the before-drywall planning page.
Four Jobs, Four Switches
A kitchen needs light in four places for four reasons, each on its own switch. The numbers below are rules of thumb electricians start from, not code.
| Layer | Where it goes, as a rule of thumb | Switching |
|---|---|---|
| Counter task pot lights | Over the front edge of the counter, roughly 24 to 30 in. out from the back wall on a standard 25 in. counter, one every 3 to 4 ft of run, lined up on the cabinet doors or the sink | Dimmer, main entry |
| Under-cabinet | Under the uppers, toward the front lip, a continuous diffused strip rather than dots | Own switch or dimmer at the entry, not on the fixture |
| Island pendants | Bottom of the shade about 30 to 36 in. above the island counter, about 30 in. apart on centre, about a foot in from each end | Own dimmer |
| General and aisle | Down the middle of the aisle only if the counter lights and pendants leave it dark; over the sink, one light centred on the bowl | With the counter lights or its own |
| Accent, optional | Above the uppers, inside glass doors, toe kick | Shared with under-cabinet |
The receptacle spacing along the counter, the island receptacles and the dedicated appliance circuits are code, and they are on the kitchen and bathroom electrical requirements page.
Why the Grid Over the Floor Fails
When the light is over the middle of the floor, you are standing between it and the counter. Your head and shoulders throw a shadow right where the knife is. The upper cabinets make it worse, because a light set too far back shines on the cabinet face instead of the counter. Ask whoever does the cooking; they have known this for years and nobody asked them.
Move the row out over the front edge of the counter and the light lands just in front of you. In most kitchens that row, the pendants and the under-cabinet strip do all the work, and the aisle needs little or nothing. Count the light out at the counter, not on the floor plan.
Two things move the row: the joists and the range hood. Mark the hood, the fridge box and any bulkhead on the drawing before rough-in, and line the lights up with the cabinet doors, not with the drywall. A light half over a door and half over a filler strip looks like a guess. The pot light page has the spacing for the rest of the house and the per-light price.
Pendants: Height, Spacing and Where the Box Goes
- Hang the bottom of the pendant about 30 to 36 in. above the island counter. Lower and the tall person in the family wears it. Higher and it lights the ceiling. A rough habit is to add about 3 in. for every foot of ceiling above 8 ft.
- Space medium pendants about 30 in. on centre. Bigger shades need more room. Keep the outer two about a foot in from the ends of the island so the light lands on the counter, not on the floor.
- Two pendants for an island up to about 6 ft, three for about 7 to 9 ft. Or one long linear fixture, which needs one box instead of three.
- Get the island drawing to the electrician before rough-in. The boxes have to be centred on an island that does not exist yet. A box 6 in. off centre gets you a canopy that tells everyone, or a hole and a patch after drywall.
- Block for heavy fixtures. A heavy glass or metal pendant wants blocking between the joists and a box rated for the weight, put in at rough-in when it costs a scrap of 2×6.
- Keep the sightline. If you want to see the family room over the island, pick shades you can see past at 30 to 36 in.
Under-Cabinet: The Wire Goes In Before the Cabinets Do
No Ontario contractor we checked publishes a price for under-cabinet lighting; most quote it after seeing the kitchen. The expensive version is the one added after the cabinets and backsplash, when the wire comes through a finished wall or a plug-in strip hangs a cord down the backsplash.
Decide at rough-in which kind you are getting. LED tape in an aluminum channel runs on low voltage from a driver, so the rough-in is a wire to each run plus a box where the driver will live. Hardwired line-voltage bars need a box or a stub at each bar. Either way the wire comes out of the wall just under the upper cabinets, where the cabinet installer can find it.
Put the driver somewhere you can reach: inside an upper cabinet, or above the uppers if the bulkhead is open. Drivers fail before the LEDs do, and one buried behind drywall turns a small part into a backsplash job. On a glossy quartz or tile backsplash, a diffused strip toward the front lip of the cabinet gives an even wash instead of a row of hot dots reflected back at you. The kitchen renovation order of work shows where this falls between rough-in and cabinets.
Switching, Dimming and One Colour
Put every layer’s switch at the entry you walk through with the groceries, and a three-way at the second one if there is a patio door. Pot lights and pendants on dimmers, under-cabinet on its own switch. Four switches in a gang is normal. A smart switch, $120 to $250 installed, can give you a “cooking” and a “late” button; labelled dimmers do the same for less.
Pick one colour temperature for every layer in the room. An under-cabinet strip at 4000K next to pot lights at 2700K makes the counter look like a gas station and the table look like a campfire. A common choice for a kitchen is 3000K with a CRI of 90 or better, so the meat looks like meat. The LED page explains why, and why the dimmer has to match the driver.
What a Kitchen Costs to Light
| Kitchen renovation, ceiling open | Basis | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 10 pot lights, open ceiling | 10 x $140 default | $1,400 |
| 3 island pendants hung on roughed-in boxes, your pendants | 3 x $200, middle of $100 to $300 | $600 |
| 4 dimmers | 4 x ($60 labour + $25 device) | $340 |
| Under-cabinet wire and driver box at rough-in | no published Ontario price | quoted on site |
| ESA notification, 11 to 30 outlets | contractor rate, 2026 | $92 |
| Total before HST | plus the under-cabinet quote | $2,432 |
HST at 13 percent is $316.16, about $2,748 in all. In a finished ceiling the same 10 lights at the $220 retrofit default are $2,200, $800 more, and pendant boxes fished into a finished ceiling are priced like retrofit lights or worse. Pendant fixtures, the under-cabinet fixtures and the hood are not in this table.
Why Ontario prices are all over the map: the contractors and price guides we checked for this page quoted very different prices for the same kitchen light. A North York contractor said $75 to $95 a pot light, another GTA contractor $100 to $150, and a Guelph contractor $150 to $250 in an open ceiling and $200 to $350 retrofit. For under-cabinet lighting none of them would print a number at all. The difference is open ceiling against finished, whether the light is supplied, the patching, and how many are in the job. Budget $140 a light with the ceiling open, and get two or three quotes on the same written scope and the same drawing.
Whoever does this work for hire must be an ESA Licensed Electrical Contractor, under a notification filed before the work starts, and nothing gets covered by drywall until ESA authorizes it. On the kitchens we build, that is the licensed electrical contractor we hire, working under their own licence and notification.
Questions people ask
How high above a kitchen island should pendants hang?
As a rule of thumb, the bottom of the pendant about 30 to 36 in. above the counter, a bit higher under a tall ceiling. It is a design habit, not a code requirement; check it against the tallest person in the house and the view across the island.
Where should pot lights go in a kitchen?
Over the front edge of the counter, roughly 24 to 30 in. out from the back wall, so the light lands in front of you instead of behind you. One every 3 to 4 ft of counter run, lined up on the cabinet doors or the sink, is a common starting point.
Does under-cabinet lighting have to be planned before the cabinets?
The wire does. Run it to each section and give the driver an accessible spot at rough-in. The fixtures can be picked later, but adding the wire after the cabinets and backsplash costs far more than the strip.
What colour temperature is best for a kitchen?
3000K with a CRI of 90 or better is a common choice, with the same colour on every layer. Mixing colours in one room is the mistake people notice most.
Put the kitchen in the whole-house number
The whole-house electrical cost calculator takes your square footage and adds extra pot lights and circuits without counting them twice. If the electrician’s quote is in, the $99 review reads up to three against this page and marks what was left out.
Sources and further reading
- Ontario Electrical Safety Code: ESA on the 2024 (29th) edition in force since May 1, 2025, and what changed for houses, EV loads and energy storage.
- ESA Bulletin 26-18-15: AFCI and GFCI in a dwelling unit: where arc-fault and ground-fault protection is required in a house.
- ESA notifications and inspections: when a notification of work is needed, who files it, and the rule that nothing is covered until an inspector authorizes it.
