When kitchen and living room share a space, lighting is the most effective tool for each area to have its own atmosphere
Open-plan kitchens have become very fashionable in recent years and for good reason: they create a sense of spaciousness, allow you to keep company while you cook and make small spaces look much bigger. But they come with a lighting challenge that not everyone solves well: how do you ensure the kitchen has the intense light it needs for cooking without making the living room look like a motorway service station café?
The answer lies in treating each zone with its own lighting, even if they share the same space.
The problem of illuminating everything equally
When there is a single lighting solution for the entire space, there is always one area that misses out. If you set the lighting with the living room in mind, the kitchen ends up dark and working on the countertop becomes a problem. If you size it for the kitchen, the living room is too brightly lit and loses all the warmth it should have.
The key is to understand that kitchen and living room, even if there is no wall separating them, are two spaces with very different needs and each deserves its own lighting system with its own control.
What does the kitchen area need?
The kitchen needs functional lighting: sufficiently bright, well distributed and without shadows in the work areas. The worktop, the hob and the sink are the most critical points. A light that comes only from the ceiling and is far from those areas casts shadows right where you need them least, which is in front of you when you are cooking.
The most effective solution is to combine general ceiling lighting with direct lighting under the upper cabinets, right above the worktop. That under-cabinet light illuminates exactly where it is needed without affecting the rest of the space. In terms of colour temperature, the kitchen works best with a neutral or slightly cool light, which allows you to see food properly and work comfortably.
What does the living room area need?
The living room calls for the exact opposite: a warmer, less intense light that invites relaxation. Floor lamps, wall sconces, indirect lighting behind the sofa or the television... anything that creates atmosphere and warmth without dazzling.
If the living room has good natural ambient light, the contrast with the kitchen area is managed on its own. Each space has its own atmosphere and the transition from one to the other is noticeable in a natural way even though there is no physical separation.
The standalone switch: essential
For all of this to work on a day-to-day basis, each zone needs its own lighting control. If the kitchen and living room share the same switch, you lose all flexibility. When you're having dinner on the sofa you don't need the worktop light on, and when you're cooking you don't need the living room ambience at maximum.
Having independent circuits for each zone allows you to turn on only what you need at any given time, which also has a direct impact on electricity consumption.
Is electrical work required to achieve this?
In most cases yes, at least partially. Adding under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen, installing additional light points in the living room or separating control circuits requires electrical work. But it doesn't have to be a major renovation.
At Iluminamos tu Vida we design open-plan kitchen lighting in Madrid, taking into account how the space is actually used. If you are renovating or simply want to improve how your space is lit, give us a call and we'll look at it together.