Kitchen under cabinet lighting

[SilentDancer]

We are having our kitchen re-fitted next week and I'd like to install under cabinet lighting. We are planning to go down the LED tape route and would appreciate help and advise on the following.

1) What specification of LED should we go for and number of LEDs per metre?

2) Should we use IP rated tape? I'm concerned about accidents involving kettle or toaster. Would an IP rated tape offer more protection or is the unprotected tape fairly resilient?

3) I would like to dim. I was planning on going down the route of a Varilight transformer and mains dimmer as I can keep all the switching to one switch by the door. Is this a good solution for dimming LEDs

4) Does anyone have any recommended suppliers? Would ideally like the strips cut to length.

 

[ericmark]

I have tried both over driving and dimming LED's including using a pulse supply but often when we buy LED lights they are not just plain LED's but also have some circuitry with them even if just a resistor and it is not easy once this is added to dim an LED. The same applies to discharge lighting it can be dimmed as with most cinemas but not with cheap control gear normally used in the home.

The normal way is rather than dimming having more or less lamps. A 1/3 and 2/3 split is common giving three levels of light with just two switches.

All items are IP rated the IP rating shows how much dust, water, 1mm rods, fingers, fists etc can get in and the IP rating required changes according to where used. Outside stuff often rated IP56 but that is not really that good.

In some cases we are not interested in water ingress and we get an IP rating like IP2X or IPXXB the X means that bit does not matter. Non of the IP rating is about heat and having a toaster in use under lamps can clearly melt things.

As electricians we fit and walk away so even where the produce is useless we don't always get to find out. There are some really daft products on the market you can even buy plastic lumps to defeat the British shuttered sockets that's how daft it gets.

There are now remote switches but fixed to wall and key fob type which allow switching from as many places as you want.

I am a little wary of kitchen fitters who don't know where to get stuff from. To me you want a warranty for the whole job and supplying items yourself means the fitter can always blame you when it goes wrong.