Bright Idea!

When we picked out the selections for our home, we were clear that we wanted lots of windows and additional lightening to illuminate our new home.  As you know, RH installs recess lights, flood lights, eyeball lights, garage post lights, mounted lights, and under cabinet lightening etc.  Most of these selections are structural and best to install during your build with the exception of the under cabinet lightening.  If you choose the under cabinet lightening it will cost you $500 for the set in our community.  Ideally, you would want RH to install them; however, I chose a less expensive route because it would have cost $1000 to install them in the kitchen and the Wet Bar.

 For those of you who are considering them or wish to install them later, here are the steps to take to give you the under cabinet lightening for under $500 which will allow you to save some money or use that money to get one of the structural items installed like the recess lights.  RH will install recess lights at $125 each.  You may decide to install two recess lights at $250 or four recess lights for $500.  Another option is to purchase the lightening packages from Ikea or from other companies that offer under cabinet light kits online.

If you have not finalized your selections with RH, ask them to install a 110V outlet in the areas that you wish for the lightening.  For example, we installed extra outlets in our master bedroom closets, inside the Wet Bar and Kitchen cabinets.  The cost for one outlet is $75.  If you have finalized your selections you can still proceed with this option (method will change slightly).  The total cost for us to achieve the under cabinet lightening in the kitchen, our wet bar and both master bedroom closets is approximately $460 instead of $1000 to light up four different areas in our home.  We opted to use the huge savings to install additional recess lights in other rooms of the house.

Use these lights to achieve the look below for your kitchen or wet bar.
 The cost for this IKEA kit $49.99
Be sure to purchase the special extension cords kit for $9.99. 

Under Cabinet Lightening in Kitchen
We installed a 110V outlet in the cabinets to hide the cords

Under Cabinet Lightening in Wet Bar (Lights are not installed in this picture) 
 We installed a 110V outlet in the cabinets to hide the cords. 

 We are installing custom built closet systems in both of our master bedroom closets and I want my shelving to be illuminated.  To achieve this look, we are using the spotlight kit below to create the look in the picture above:

The IKEA spotlight kit comes in a three pack for $24.99 or a four pack for $39.99