Debbie Adams
Owner, Adams Company
Austin, Texas
With led lighting being nice and bright, we particularly like putting it inside the face frame of cabinets or underneath the cabinet box at the toe kick space: You won’t see the lighting strip, but you will still get the benefits of an illuminated pathway when you have to get up in the middle of the night.
I’ve used LEDI Inspire in a pantry as well, putting it on a light switch rather than a motion sensor, as I prefer to do for undercabinet lighting. I started using it as toe kick lighting after seeing a similar set up in a showroom, and my clients always really like the added touch.
There are a few channel options that you can pair with the indoor Inspire LED Tape Light to give the space more diffusion and protection. Using them also gives the tape light more of a clean, fixture appearance.
There are a few different color temperature options, ranging from 1800K to 4000K; right now I’m working with 3000K for the toe kick lighting, but it’ll vary based on need.
You do have to build your cabinets with a cabinet box to hide this tape light in, and you need a lot of advanced planning—deciding how much wire and what parts you need, for instance—to run the wiring behind appliances. It’s not easy to tack on this type of lighting at the end of a project, but it’s worth it to me to take the extra time upfront to get the extra illumination in places that need it most.