Hiding Kitchen Lighting

Install light bars designed to contour to the underside of your cabinets. Use double-mount tape to secure the prefabricated units to the cabinet bottoms or screws that are long enough to thread into the wood but not so long that they protrude through the cabinets. Add a strip of wood that’s stained or painted to match the cabinet finish if, after the light bars are installed, you can spot any of them.

Mount interior lights in the kitchen cabinets if your door fronts have glass inserts. This will allow light to spill from the cabinets into the kitchen. Use a drill to create a wiring channel from cabinet to cabinet if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, and then mount a series of small fixtures manufactured for interior cabinet illumination at discreet locations in the cabinets. Make sure that your plates, cups and serving pieces don’t obstruct the lights.

Replace your ceiling fixture with string lights wrapped around a hanging pot rack. Remove your ceiling fixture, and replace the stationary socket with a string of lights. Hang a pot rack from the spot where you had your ceiling fixture. Wrap the string lights around the rack so that the bulbs become part of the design. For example, a string of decorative lights with bulbs in the shape of grape clusters or elements matching your kitchen colors or theme can create a unique design that’s both charming and fun.

Replace a solid pantry door with a screen door, and hide lights behind the wood door frame by attaching battery-powered light bars – the slim designs made for undercabinet installation – to the frame, using double-mount tape. If you prefer to hard wire the light bars, attach them to the frame in the same manner, but tack down the wiring around the back side of the frame and feed it through a small hole from the pantry to the power source. Commit to keeping a tidy pantry if you decide to tackle this light-hiding project.

Hide an ugly ceiling light beneath a colander shade, as long as you don’t require a bright overhead light source for food preparation that emanates from on high. Choose a metal colander with an ample number of strainer holes so that even when the colander is installed, you get plenty of illumination. Measure the circumference of the colander lip, and then trace the circle on the ceiling so that the light bulb is centered. Use brackets to mount the colander to the ceiling so that the light pattern splashes across the expanse of your kitchen.

Fashion inventive covers for pendant lights – particularly those located over primary light sources for food preparation -- like islands. A single hole drilled into the bottom of washed and lacquer-sealed tin cans can turn the former home of crushed tomatoes or peaches into pendant covers. Match up your kitchen colors with food labels, and you’ll not only hide the bulbs in plain sight, but also be asked where you found such cool pendant covers.