Our 1887 kitchen had one overhead light and no under cabinet lighting. For the first six months after we moved in, I chopped vegetables in a shadow cast by my own body. Getting under cabinet lighting into a kitchen with original millwork from the 1880s without damaging anything took some planning.
What We Were Working With
The cabinetry is original to the house: face-frame construction in pine, with hand-cut dovetails in the drawer boxes and raised-panel doors. These are not cabinets you drill into casually. Every hole is a decision. We had an electrician confirm the outlets inside the lower cabinets could handle the additional load before we bought anything.
We went with plug-in LED strip lights, not hardwired, specifically to avoid penetrating the cabinet bottoms. The strips use adhesive backing and the cord routes along the back edge of the cabinet base and down through a hole in the back corner, far from any visible millwork. From standing position at the counter, the cord is invisible.
The Color Temperature Decision
We have pine cabinets in their original warm patina and marble-look laminate counters we will eventually replace with soapstone. For that combination, 2700K was the only right answer. I tested a 4000K strip I had from another project and it made the cabinets look orange and the counters look greenish-gray. At 2700K the kitchen looks warm and deliberate.
What We Actually Installed
We used a 16-foot LED strip roll with an aluminum diffuser channel that gives an even glow without visible dot-pattern shadows. I cut the strip to fit each cabinet run and used the included connectors at corners. The total installation took about four hours across three cabinet sections. We added a plug-in dimmer because the strips at full brightness were more than we needed for counter ambience. If you are comparing strip lights, BO-HA's kitchen lighting section has under-cabinet options that give a more finished look than a bare strip.
The One Decision I Would Change
I put the strip at the very front edge of the cabinet bottom, thinking that would maximize counter illumination. The problem is that the strip is now visible when you stand at the counter and look toward the cabinet. I should have set it back 2.5 to 3 inches from the front face so the aluminum channel sits behind the face frame and stays invisible. The light is fine. The visible channel still bothers me three months later.
How It Changed the Kitchen
The practical improvement is obvious: I can see what I am cutting. The more surprising thing was what happened to the counter visually. The under-cabinet light makes the counter surface glow slightly, which separates the counter plane from the cabinet above it in a way the overhead light never did. The kitchen feels like it has layers. For a room this old, that depth of light feels right.
Set the strips back 2.5 to 3 inches from the cabinet front face. Every guide told me this. I still did not do it the first time. Learn from me.