When we built our house, back in 2014/15, I used an unconventional lighting plan in the kitchen based on previous experience in our old house. The main lighting is overhead on the ceiling and consists of six fluorescent units - 21 W HE T5 'under-cabinet lights' in daylight colour (865). The main criteria were sufficient brightness for me (I've not got the best vision) and daylight colour for her (she was brought up with it). It works well incidentally. The lights are placed over the front edge of the worktops to provide glare-free, shadow-free light everywhere. It's worked well so far. I've replaced a couple of tubes over the years and we've switched off one of the tubes which is over a door area where lighting is not so important. We also have three smaller under-cupboard lights actually under the cupboards that we tend to leave on in the evenings rather than the bright lights. I'll try to post a picture later.

But today I noticed that three of the units have died. I haven't investigated yet but I suppose it will be the tubes and I'll be able to replace them from spares. It set me thinking though about my long-term options. I gather ( https://www.auralight.com/en/applications/applications/industry-light/t8-phase-out ) that T5 tubes will be phased out next year and they've become increasingly difficult to source over the years. LEDs have improved to the point where they're about competitive with T5 tubes so I'll probably replace the kitchen lights with a LED scheme. The rest of the house is lit with GU10 LED lamps (5W Crompton) in wall and ceiling surface-mounted fittings.

I'm not sure what to get for the kitchen, so I thought I'd ask for people's ideas and opinions here. I don't like downlights, and the typical triple 5W GU10 fittings elsewhere feel like a bit of a bodge if I fitted them in the kitchen. So what products are there out there that are worth looking at? I do like the idea that the lamps are replaceable within the fittings. I don't especially want to have to do major surgery on the ceiling!

I've fitted several ceiling tracked systems, some of which were very discrete and close fitting to the ceiling as opposed to suspended. The actual light fittings for such tracks vary in design and size. In you case I'd be tempted to fit one continuous " U " track around the whole ceiling with a single power feed or different ones if you need separate switching, with different luminaires to suit each particular application. These type of mini tracks and fittings are extremely small and less visually obtrusive than fluorescent battens.

This is type of thing I imagine:-

https://www.weverducre.com/en/products/c/track-lights~23482?page=2

We stuck selfadhesive LED tape to the underside of all the high-level kitchen cupboards, which is great for task lighting.

If we did it again we'd use RGB LED tape so we could change the colour temperature at different times of day (warm white while eating, cool white in the daytime, flashing disco colours only when the kids are allowed to access the programmer!). It would also work stuck on the tops of the cupboards bouncing off the ceiling, might add several runs to get enough lumens.

The LED tape in the kitchen has been faultless but another batch elsewhere in the house has some failed 'pixels' - both batches off ebay.

(Edit - hide it behind pelmets etc, or use diffusers, it's not pretty to look directly at)

GU10 downlighters are good in kitchens where the surfaces you want to illuminate are all horizontal - worksurfaces and floors. Some separate ambient uplighting is pleasant if you also eat in there.

Can you just replace your tubes with LED tubes? They usually come with an LED starter to replace the Flourescent Starter in the fitting. I have done this with a couple in the house when they failed, actually the ones that are under the kitchen wall units (they were already there). Changed them to daylight colour too!

Posted By: revorWhat is it about downlight you don't like.

Partly it's just what I consider to be a messy look with lots of lights everywhere. There's the lots of holes too, with possible consequences for acoustic and fire insulation. No airtightness worries because it's the ground floor ceiling thankfully. In our case now it would also be quite a lot of hassle to get power to all the downlights. But that's just my opinion, yours is obviously different :)

Posted By: Simon StillPersonally I think the only place RGB lighting has a place is the garden.... You can buy 'dual white' LED tape which has two different colours of white LED on it and you can light either circuit. white colour temp from RGB tape is never that accurate and if theres anywhere you can see it or see it reflected you can pick out the diffent colour leds which is why there is also RGBW tape which has a separate white LED used when you want white rather than trying to blend the RGB

I agree about the RGB. Back in the day I used to have lots of coloured lights for parties but those days and lights are long gone! Though there are the Xmas tree lights :)

I just replaced a fitting in the downstairs shower room. It was a 2-D fluorescent fitting and the lamp failed. I bought a replacement lamp from Screwfix but that was DOA, so I decided to go for a GU10 LED fitting like those in the other shower rooms. I bought one from Amazon but the quality was appalling so I sent that back and got another from John Lewis where I bought the existing ones. It came with three 3000K GU10 lamps so I put those in. The first thing SWMBO said when she saw it was "What a horrible colour. It's so yellow" But I persuaded her to leave it for now.

I've never really looked into LED tapes. It always seems like they would need a neatness I don't usually bring to DIY. :(

re bulbs vs fittings. Natural inclination is always to go for replaceable 'bulbs' BUT my experience has been that good quality LED fittings really do have a very long life, whereas I've had to replace numerous LED bulbs over the years (especially GU10's) regardless of the brand/quality. I'm sure the issue is overheating - either of the LEDs or the driver which has to be miniturised and packed into a 'bad' space in a bulb.

When I bought the fittings for our house I decided on LED GU10s as representing a reasonably safe path forward. I bought a load of lamps and tested them principally for the light quality - a surprising number had blue and yellow regions visible in the output. I chose Crompton as the apparent best and bought 50. That was in 2015 and none have failed yet. Most are in open fittings, because I was worried about heat as a life-shortening factor too, but the 'wet' rooms got the IP44 enclosed units I mentioned. A few places got (T5 or CFL) fluorescents and I've had to replace those tubes a few times but they're getting more difficult to buy. edit to add: I just bought some more of the same GU10s at a very reasonable price so I'm happy with my decision.

Also suspect that drivers are less reliable than the LED chips themselves in most cases so finings where they are separate would likely have a longer life. And even if LEDs do fail in a fitting you *can* replace them - I found some bargain high quality Edison screw bulb garden lights and modified them to run sections of LED tape instead of a bulb.

That's interesting to know. I don't have any failures to confirm it unfortunately :) You've set me wondering about removing the innards of the T5 fittings and putting some LED tape inside and drivers either inside the units or in the ceiling above. You can just see a blanking plate between the two lights near the window in my photo - those are where the wiring is terminated.

Ikea's LED light strips and panels are well worth looking at - the larger panels give a really nice diffuse light (eg https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/floalt-led-light-panel-dimmable-white-spectrum-40436316/). Though the 'last chance to buy' on some of the fittings suggests they're just about to launch a new range.

You can use all their drivers/wireless smart home stuff/switches etc but none of the electronics are in the lights themselves and they're all just running 24v (better than 12v if you want remotely located drivers) so you just cut off the plug on the trailing cable and connect to whatever driver you want to use.

Thanks, that's an idea I'll definitely look at. :)

edit: I just looked at the product you linked. It says lumens 2200 power 29 W. 76 lm/W. The T5 tubes are 91 lm/W !?

Comparing lumens/watts : lumens from tubes go outwards in all directions; lumens from surface mount LEDs go out in a cone shape, unless diffused. One might give you more useful lumens for your watts than the other, depending on application.

We have ~ 2000 lumens of lighting in our kitchen in total, half each ambient and task lighting. DJH it sounds like you need more intense lighting, check whether you can fit in enough runs, if doing it with led tape, and meaty enough drivers?

Posted By: LFDJH - how is your lighting going ? I am not convinced LED as much better at Lumens /Watt or that directional nature of LED (WinA) gives better light from doing some rough trials. I am going to stay traditional !

Yes, that was why we originally went fluorescent. T5 tubes had better lumens/watt than the LEDs then and are still better than a lot of LEDs now. Plus the tubes gives a distributed light source with less shadows. I understand the directional nature of LEDs but the reflector mounts in the fittings do help somewhat with the tubes.

But to answer your question - I'm still thinking about my next step. The Sylvania tubes are a good brand. I generally go for the HE ones rather than the HO. They are getting harder to find though.

Posted By: WillInAberdeen4 off lamps at 3350 lm each, is 13400 lm - I think that's more lighting than the entire ground floor of our house!

Workshops and garages can need quite bright lighting at times. And it can be difficult to say exactly where the light is going to be needed. Trailing inspection lamps around is not always convenient.

I think we had the discussion about kitchen lamp brightness before, and agreed to differ. Cooking dinner can mean being anywhere in the room and somewhere else the next moment. And for me, my eyes don't get any better every year.

I found the lumen ratings quoted on listings on Amazon/eBay etc are usually lies. Have to buy a few different lamps and try them out to find the bright ones, or go with big name brands.

Yes, and not just the lumens. The CRI of some LEDs is absolutely appalling. So I generally go for either Sylvania (mostly for fluorescent) or Crompton (mostly for LEDs). The reliability also seems to be pretty good, as well as the specs being true. Not one Crompton has failed in over seven years to date.