LIGHTING & VENTILATION
Kitchen lighting and ventilation: what actually matters
These two get bundled together and treated as an afterthought. They shouldn’t be. Good lighting changes how the room feels every day, and the wrong rangehood means you smell dinner for hours after it’s finished.
THE QUICK VERSION
Lighting is about layers. Ventilation is about moving air, not just making noise.
Most kitchens end up with one light in the middle of the ceiling and a rangehood chosen last, right at the end of the budget. Both are easy to get right, if you plan for them early instead of bolting them on.
LIGHTING
Three layers, not one light
TASK
Task lighting
Under-cabinet lights over the bench, where you actually cut, cook and read recipes. The most-used light in the kitchen, and the most commonly left out.
AMBIENT
Ambient lighting
General ceiling light that fills the whole room evenly, so the kitchen doesn’t feel gloomy once the task lights are switched off.
ACCENT
Accent lighting
Pendants over an island or a feature strip, there for mood and style rather than function. Worth doing well, but not the first thing to get right.
VENTILATION
The rangehood question that actually matters
RECIRCULATING
Filters air and puts it straight back into the room. Cheaper to install, and no ducting needed. But it doesn’t remove moisture, heat or smell from the room, just the grease.
DUCTED
Pulls air outside through ducting. More installation work, but it genuinely clears steam, heat and cooking smell instead of just filtering the grease out of it.
A FAMILIAR SCENE
One kitchen looked stunning on the render, right up until the first big cook-up. The rangehood was recirculating, chosen to save on running ducting through a tricky ceiling cavity.
The room stayed warm and smelled like dinner for hours, every time. Retrofitting proper ducting after the renovation ended up costing more than doing it right the first time. Extraction and lighting are small next to the big cost drivers in a kitchen renovation, but they are the ones you notice every day would have.
BEFORE YOU CHOOSE
Five questions worth asking before you decide
- What’s the extraction rate, not just the price? A cheap rangehood that barely moves air isn’t actually cheaper once you’re redoing it.
- Is it ducted or recirculating, and does that fit how you cook? Frequent stir-fries and pan-searing need real extraction, not filtered recirculation.
- Where’s your task lighting, specifically? “Overhead” doesn’t count if the light ends up behind you at the bench.
- Are your lighting layers on separate switches? One layer for cooking, one for evening, so you’re not stuck with all-or-nothing.
- Has the ducting route been checked before you commit to a rangehood position? Moving it later is expensive.
