Fluorescent Lightning Expert : Kitchen Fluorescent Lighting

If you are renovating your kitchen, you should consider installing kitchen fluorescent lighting. The kitchen is one of the rooms in your home that has the highest requirement for good lighting. Despite this, many people choose to go with incandescent light fixtures, which burn out bulbs much more frequently and cost a great deal more in electricity than their fluorescent counterparts.

The first step in selecting kitchen fluorescent lighting is to determine what type of fluorescent light you want in your kitchen. T12 fluorescent lights were once the common selection, as they had a long life span and good light quality. However, t12 fluorescent lights are being replaced by the more efficient, brighter t8 models. T8 fluorescent lighting is an excellent kitchen fluorescent lighting solution due to the fact that these lights perform at 90% light brightness even after 8000 hours of operation. As three t8 lamps can do the job of four t12 lamps at even lower costs, it is possible to save a significant amount of money on lighting costs.

However, there is one disadvantage to kitchen fluorescent lighting. Mercury is a common element found in fluorescent lights. While not all lamps contain mercury, you need to be aware that quite a few of them do. When you install kitchen fluorescent lighting, you need to make certain that you are very careful with the tubes so that you are not accidentally exposed to the mercury that is held within the tube.

Some may consider this a disadvantage as well: kitchen fluorescent lighting is more expensive to install than standard incandescent fixtures. While the growing popularity of the fixtures has gone a long way to decrease the price, adding kitchen fluorescent lighting can increase the costs of renovations.

If you already own kitchen fluorescent lighting, you will need to check the integrity of the fixture every few years. If you have new tubes in your fixture and you notice a buzzing or flickering from the lights, it is possible that the fixture may need replaced or repaired. While the fixtures typically last well over ten years, the older models of fixtures, typically designed for t12 fluorescent lights, are known to degrade over time. If you own t12 kitchen fluorescent lighting, you will want to upgrade to a t8 model as the fixtures last longer and support the t8 lamps which are slated to be the standard fluorescent from 2010 and later.