Tips For Choosing Restaurant Kitchen Lighting

Good lighting is essential for a commercial kitchen to function safely and effectively. The food preparation spaces should be well lit, while avoiding excessive reflections and glare from the kitchen equipment. Here are some points to bear in mind when selecting lights for a catering establishment.

How much natural light is there?

Ideally, the kitchen should have plenty of natural light from windows and skylights that look out onto open spaces. The positioning of the windows should be taken into account when deciding on the amount and luminosity of the lights in each area of the kitchen, as well as what tasks are carried out in each space.

Light fittings

The light fittings should be easy to clean, as this will need doing regularly in a busy kitchen. For this reason, recessed or surface mounted lights are preferable to suspended fittings. 

Shatterproof bulbs

Kitchens are a high-risk area due to constant exposure to high temperatures. A shattered lightbulb in a commercial kitchen is expensive not just in terms of the lost bulb, but all the time spent clearing away every last shard of glass. The risk of contamination to food and equipment is high, so any exposed food in the vicinity will have to be disposed of. 

There is also the danger to the health and safety of staff and customers to consider, whether through being indirectly hit by pieces of glass, or consuming contaminated food. Therefore, installing light covers or shatterproof bulbs is essential.

LED Lighting

With the soaring cost of electricity in the UK, using low-energy LED lights will save significant amounts, as they typically use 75% less power than standard bulbs. They also emit less heat than regular bulbs, which is an important consideration for a commercial kitchen, for reasons already discussed above!