How to Install Lighting Under Your Kitchen Cabinets

Lowe's home improvement expert, Mike Kraft, shows how to properly and safely install low voltage lights under cabinets in your home kitchen.

Mike Kraft: There are many ways to breaking up your kitchen, but a fewer simpler than installing low voltage under cabinet lighting. It’s functional, it’s decorative and it brightens your work space and creates an inviting mode. You have a lot of choices when it comes to cabinet lighting for instance an LED light bar doesn’t produce much heat use as very little power and can last up to 25 years but when many people think of under cabinet lighting they think of more advance hardwired options. If you are considering a hardwire setup prepare for some electrical work. For our project we are using an easy to install pot light kit with the dimmer, the power supply plug right into the wall. Pot light are small and accent the countertop nicely, there are many different types of light kits available so choose the setup that’s right for you. Before you begin the installation is sure to read the manufactures and instructions and gather everything you will need the printable instructions and tools and materials for this project can be found at Lowes.com/Videos. Here’s what you will need, an under cabinet lighting kit, Philips and standard screw drivers, a drill with bits, a hammer, a pencil, safety glasses and you might need the small ladder. If you resist the fixtures you will also need the whole saw, first you will need to clean the workspace so start by clearing everything from the countertop and you might have to remove items from your cabinets in order to wrap the wires. Next plan the placement of your lights, our manufacture requires spacing the fixture at least 12 inches apart for safety and heat reasons so we’re going to add one light under each cabinet. Most manufactures recommend placing the lights as closest possible to the front of the cabinet to give your countertops maximum coverage. Full face cabinets will hide the fixtures and wires in the resist underneath. Plan where you wrap the wires, you want to conceal the wires and the plug in power supply. In some places we can wrap our wires to the space between the cabinet and down to the isle behind the fridge, in other places we have to draw holes and run the wires through the cabinets. Once you have a good plan mark the positions of the light, now onto the installation. Remove the lens cover from the housing, hold the lights in there mark positions with the wire knot to the back of the cabinet then mount the housing assembly with wood screws. If you are going to resist the fixtures such as inside the top of the cabinet just drill a resist hole with the whole saw and wrap the wires through the hole before mounting the light. We are placing our power supply behind the refrigerator. Next hide the wires along the wrap to the power supply. I’ll keep as clip to attached to the underside of the cabinet which is few touch from a hammer. Any access cord can be hidden inside the cabinet or in the space between the two cabinets. A word of caution, don’t try to conceal the wires or power supply behind the wallboard. If you want to tally hide your wires in the walls as you consider a hard wires installation. To plug in our lights we just slip the connector body over the pre installed pins and pushing until the snap at the position then plug them into the cable. Your connectors maybe different so check your instructions, finish mounting and assembly the rest of the fixture, our system also has a dimmer that plugs to the main power supply, just pill off the backing and stick it to the cabinet and wrap the wire to the power supply. Plug in the lights to see if they work property, if not check the connections of the wire plugs. Once everything is working we attach the lens covers on the fixtures, when everything been installed you can put things back. Looks great and now we have some terrific lights to make kind of work easier and enhance the kitchen features if you want to see other ideas or update your kitchen or for other how to projects visit Lowes.com/Videos.