Top 11 Accent Lights for Kitchen Projects in Contemporary Homes
Modern kitchen light design goes beyond utility, blending lighted decor with decorative lights. Discover the top accent lighting choices for kitchens!
In our kitchens, we usually want to impress our family or guests with the meals we prepare. For this, we often rely on bright, cool white lighting that makes cooking easier and safer. But what about the other things we want to showcase—like decor and appliances, wood cabinetry choices, or architectural finishes?
This is where one of the key elements of contemporary lighting comes in: accent lighting. In this article, we’ll give you a quick overview of what it is and show you 11 of the most popular and effective ways homeowners across the country are using it in their cooking spaces.
What Is Accent Lighting & How Is It Used in the Kitchen?
Whenever there’s an element in your kitchen that goes beyond mere functionality, and you want to highlight its looks—whether it’s your spice collection or your cookbooks—you’re going to need this type of lighting. Accent lighting is precisely that soft, focused glow designed to draw attention to specific details or finishes in a room.
It is also the light that stays on after the task lights are turned off: the background glow for dining room conversations, the spotlights over snacks on Super Bowl night, or the nightlight that guides you to the fridge for a sandwich.
As a rule of thumb, it should be brighter than your general kitchen lighting (the main light that illuminates the entire space) so it can effectively highlight the focal points you choose. Accent lighting is usually warm and yellowish, though some kitchens also feature colored accents.
Because it’s a purely decorative element that adds style and personality to your kitchen, how you use it is entirely up to your taste—just like deciding how cooked you like your steak. Still, it’s helpful to know the most popular applications, guided by strategic placements that maximize the decorative impact of your space:
The Best LED Accent Lights: 11 Ways to Highlight Your Kitchen Interior Design
The kitchen is a perfect space for integrating different types of lighting and LED products for a variety of purposes, so you probably already have many of these applications at home without realizing they’re actually accent lighting.
At the same time, this means that a single installation can serve as task or ambient lighting and, if harnessed well—through customization or dimming features—also function as accent lighting. These are the standout uses to inspire your kitchen layout:
Kitchen Storage Cabinets with Doors and Shelves: Classics You Can’t Go Wrong With
It’s incredible how many lighting applications revolve around the cabinets in our kitchen. Every area associated with them—above, inside, and even below—can be a perfect spot for accent lighting! The same goes for shelves, whether open or closed.
1. Under-Cabinet Lighting
This comes as no surprise—installing lights under your floating kitchen cabinets and above the countertop is by far the most popular and well-known application in homes today. And don’t forget its primary goal: providing bright enough light to keep you alert and safe while peeling potatoes, operating high-precision appliances like a mixer, or seasoning your dishes.
That said, even though it’s secondary, the moments after cooking are just as important. The space between the countertop and upper cabinets is often the largest surface area in a kitchen, and how it’s lit makes a big difference for most occasions.
Some decorative goals for placing accent lights here include:
- Highlighting a backsplash with colorful, creative tiles or unique wood finishes
- Illuminating functional-but-decorative items like a themed ceramic cookie jar
- Lighting recipes as they rest after preparation
- Serving as mood lighting for more intimate dinners in your kitchen dining nook
A great option is to choose a lighting system that allows for easy transition between task lighting and more atmospheric or colorful lights. This way, you get the best of both worlds and unlock the full potential of this versatile application.
2. Above-Cabinet Lighting
These lights—usually LED strips or fixtures—are mounted on the top cabinets in your kitchen and directed toward the ceiling. They wash the ceiling with soft, indirect light, drawing the eye upward to highlight finishes like wood or textured popcorn surfaces, while making the room feel taller and more spacious.
They also provide gentle mood illumination for late-evening, low-effort kitchen activities, like handwashing the day’s dishes. Besides, they are perfect for showcasing decor or holiday ornaments you usually place on top!
3. In-Cabinet Lighting
If you’ve ever walked through your neighborhood at night, you’ve probably noticed how the light spilling from neighbors’ windows softens your stroll, adding the textured glow of little panes. The same effect happens in your kitchen when you install lighting inside glass-front cabinets or hutches, creating a calm, glare-free glow for a quick bite after a tiresome day.
These lights also turn your cabinets into permanent or temporary display cases. They let you show your personality to guests, whether it’s seasonal collections like Easter bunny figurines or cherished heirlooms like the china your grandmother passed down to you.
4. Lighted Shelves
Whether floating or part of a larger unit, shelves aren’t just perfect for holding decorative items in your kitchen—they’re also ideal for recessed or surface-mounted spotlighting. From a collection of Coca-Cola bottles to mini-plants or vintage tin boxes, there’s no object on your shelves that won’t be noticed and admired.
This setup also creates a layered or striped layout of shadows and depth, perfect, for example, for plainer kitchens looking for a bit of geometry to spice things up.
Artistic Light Fixtures & Sculptural Lighting
Sometimes, the impact of accent lights goes beyond simply guiding our attention to objects or architectural elements in the kitchen—they become the focal point. Much like the finest dishes, these lights and lamps can be considered art in themselves.
5. Statement Pendant Light
When we watch a movie and a character is a millionaire, you can often tell just by looking at the lamps hanging from the ceiling. The kitchen is no exception—alongside food and high-end gadgets, they are usually a showcase of refined taste.
Their geometry tends to be complex and varied, and the types of bulbs or light sources they use are sometimes unique. What they have in common is that they hang from the ceiling, usually over the island, and become yet another accent in the kitchen.
On the home goods market, you’ll find pre-made fixtures (recently, finishes in all-gold or all-silver have been popular) as well as designer pieces or true vintage treasures of various styles, from chandeliers and crystal pendants to stone and globe lamps.
On the other hand, because every kitchen is unique, many people who prefer a minimalist style opt to create their own shapes using DIY pendant light kits. The result is often clean, straight lines and modern, streamlined illumination over centerpieces, fruit baskets, and more.
6. Cute Wall Sconces
These types of wall-mounted light fixtures come in as many designs as your creative mind can imagine. They can be shaped like a lantern to evoke a ship, like a torch for a dungeon-inspired look, or featuring colored glass and mosaic for an Art Deco vibe, and more.
What they have in common is that design takes priority over brightness, making them subtle alternatives that draw attention to themselves while adding character or theming to your kitchen.
7. Kitchen Artwork Lighting
More and more, kitchens feature framed artwork on their walls—whether it’s a drawing by your child, commissioned culinary-themed pieces, or simple, inexpensive prints or decorative signs from a chain store that add personality to the space.
Small, museum-like fixtures mounted directly above or beside these pieces—especially if they have a high CRI, meaning they render colors accurately—draw immediate attention to what’s on display.
8. LED Sheet Lighting for a Stone Backsplash Kitchen
You may have the idea to incorporate one of nature’s ultimate canvases into your kitchen backsplash or countertop: stone patterns. Whether it’s the banding of onyx, the cloud-like veining of alabaster, or the crystalline inclusions of quartzite, a soft, sheet-shaped LED light can transform it into a work of art while providing accent mood lighting.
Decorative Kitchen Night Lights & Visual Guides
Sometimes accent lights aren’t meant to highlight anything specific—they act more as subtle markers. This can mean serving as gentle guides to orient anyone using the space or visual cues that outline the edges of the room with a decorative glow.
9. Toe-Kick Lighting
Want your kitchen to look like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie? This type of accent lighting—LED strips installed along the base of lower cabinets near the floor—gives your workstations and islands a floating effect, creating cohesion and a visual flow.
It also serves two other purposes: first, it acts as a helpful guide to prevent anyone from stubbing their toes when grabbing a late-night snack or drink; second, it provides a soft glow that highlights artistic flooring patterns or colors of your choice.
10. Under-Counter Lighting
Attached to the underside of your countertop lips, these soft lights wash over the finishes of your middle cabinetry, highlighting wood grain or modern panel patterns. They help guide you when reaching for utensils in drawers or upper cabinets, creating a visual cue similar to toe-kick lighting—but at elbow or hip level.
11. Cove Lighting
While the most common recommendation for this type of indirect lighting is to use architectural-bright fixtures that can replace traditional overhead lights, a softer, accent-style glow can also work—either to highlight ceiling artwork or simply to add more visual depth to the upper part of your space.
Make Your Kitchen Accent Lighting Ideas Come True with Flexfire
Before we wrap up, keep in mind that while choosing the right accent lights for your kitchen comes down to planning, strategic placement, and product knowledge, at Flexfire, we’ve created a line of accent lighting products designed for exactly these needs:
Looking for more information on installation? Or maybe you’re after DIY accent kits to start your own kitchen lighting project? Let our team of experts guide you—just like good toe-kick accent lights, we’ll help you reach your destination without any stubbed pinky toes along the way.
