Over Kitchen Sink Lighting Ideas – 15 Types of Light Goes Over Kitchen Sink

Looking for over kitchen sink lighting ideas?

The kitchen is a delicate place in any house. Your kitchen is well-lit, but kitchen sink areas might have some dark areas. So, decorating the kitchen sink with some amazing light fixtures and a little ambient lighting wouldn’t be such a bad idea!

But you may ask what type of light should be above my sink in the kitchen?

There are diverse sources of lighting over the kitchen sink. It’s common to see LED lights are illuminating in the kitchen, but you can think of something more dazzling. Choose multiple sconce lights or pendant lights, or flush mount lights for your kitchen.

Whether you choose pendant or sconce lights, the purpose of setting lights over the sink kitchen is to flow the lighting in the required dark places of your kitchen. We have compiled some of the best lighting ideas to improve the lighting for your over the kitchen sink.

Top 15 Over The Kitchen Sink Lighting Ideas 2023

The kitchen sink is the place where you can consider enhancing the kitchen lighting. Also, this particular place is the most used part of the kitchen for cleaning and washing dishes, and vegetables.

Placing some lighting over the kitchen sink is a great idea to enhance the visual appeal of your kitchen. Without further ado, let’s see some over-the-sink lighting ideas in a later section.

1. Pendant light over kitchen sink

If you find your kitchen lacks lighting, a light fixture over the kitchen sink is the best idea to brighten your kitchen. The pendant light is one of the most used lightings over the kitchen sink. You need to follow the size, placement, and types of pendant light to choose in the first place.

The pendant light is the ceiling light that features single or several bulbs. This particular light is also called a drop or suspender. The pendant light is generally suspended by the chain, cord, or a different connector. The pendant contains a light bulb at the end of a cord or connector.

Pendant lights also consist of various shades and styles such as crystal, brushed bronze, gold, and more. This illuminates your kitchen with various lighting over the sink.

You can install the pendant lights containing a width of 3 to 6 inches that can visually enhance the look of your kitchen. People mostly use a smaller size of pendant lights the size of 7 inches or bigger, and that also contains different shades, casting the light in the required places of the kitchen.

The standard size for the placement of pendant light mainly depends on how the sink is placed in the kitchen. Primarily, pendant lights are placed being away from the wall at a distance of 4 to 6 inches.

This ensures the lighting spreads across the kitchen; on the other hand, placing pendant lights too close to the wall will cause glare, and your kitchen wall might have some dark spots because of the placement.

LED pendant lights with minimalist aesthetic designs are trendy pendant light products. But our recommendation is to hang the multiple linear, and slim tubes of light, or a large artistic chandelier would be the best pendant light choice over the kitchen sink.

Get the guide: Stunning kitchen curtain ideas above the sink

2. Flush mount light over kitchen sink

Another addition to kitchen sink lighting is the flush mount light. Flush mount light generally provides diffused ambient lighting for your kitchen sink.

Flush mount lights are placed stuck against the ceiling and illuminate the light spreading downward. As the Flush mount light is placed against and close to the ceiling, the bulb stays dust and debris free. These types of lights generally illuminate small rooms and fill small spaces that are missing lights.

You can place the flush mount lightings according to the low and high ceiling requirements. The globe flush mount includes 6-inches, 8-inches, 10-inches, and 12-inches in diameter shape. Choose the precise one to set in the kitchen sink.

The placement of the flush mount light includes either a directional or spotlight design. Choose the one according to your kitchen sink area.

3. Semi flush light over kitchen sink

Semi-flush lights are quite similar to flush mount lights, but both vary the design. The semi-flush lights offer some space compared with the flush mount lights.

Semi-flush lights are the kind of drop lights that leaves a bit of space between the ceiling and the fixture. Although the usage of this type of lighting is mainly in living rooms, and bedrooms dining rooms, you can use this lighting over the kitchen sink as well.

The average semi-flush mount lights range from 6 ¼ to 23 inches wide. So, choose the average size to set up the semi-flush mount light over the kitchen sink.

The placement in the ceiling of the semi-flush mount fixture ranges from 6 to 21-inch drop-down set up. So, a semi-flush mount setup needs adequate space in the ceiling, and make sure you set the light over the center of the kitchen sink.

There are many varieties of semi-flush mount kitchen sink lights, such as fabric shades semi-flush mount lights, crystal designs, caged designs, and themed designs. Also, different glass designs such as frosted, etched, ribbed alabaster, tea-stained, tiffany style, linen lights.

But the most popular ones are brushed nickel, oil-rubbed bronze, antique bronze, and white, satin nickel semi-flush mount lights.

4. Wall mounted light over kitchen sink

This time wall mounted light covers our kitchen sink lighting recommendation. This type of light provides upward, downward or diffuse light in your kitchen.

Wall mounted lights refer to the sconce light as well. These types of lighting are attached to the wall and are mostly used to cast upward downward or diffuse lighting. These days wall mounted lights generally strap up for exterior lighting.

There are different sizes and shapes of wall-mounted lights to use over the kitchen sink. Using wall-mounted light mainly depends on the size of the frame. So, follow the recommendation of sizes for wall mounted light.

• 12 to 18-inches frame requires 5 ½ -a inch light bulb
• 16 to 24-inches frame requires 7 to 9 inches light
• 25 to 37 inches frame requires 14 ½ to 16-inches light

The placement of the wall-mounted kitchen sink is quite different from other kitchen sink lighting. If you have a window right behind the kitchen sink, use the upper position of the window to place the wall-mounted kitchen sink.

Remember that any wall-mounted light for the kitchen sink should be placed in the center over the kitchen sink. This prevents the inconsistent shadows of lighting.

5. Surface-mounted light over kitchen sink

Surface-mounted light has a very simple and minimalist design that you can set over the kitchen sink. This kind of light is quite similar to flush-mounted lights.

Surface-mounted lights are installed on a flat surface or, in this case, a flat ceiling. This is the reason you can call these lights ceiling lights as well. Some surface-mounted lights are connected through a chain.

These surface-mounted lights consist of shapes and sizes that you can use over the kitchen sink for a wide space of lighting.

Surface-mounted lights include several sizes and shapes. The downward-directed light with a slim body and slight curvature is the most used one. So, generally, 10-inches in length, 10-inches in width, and 3-inches in height in size is the most used one.

The surface-mounted lights are typically placed like the flush-mounted lights. But surface mounted lights can cover more areas of the kitchen sink.

6. Barn light over kitchen sink

The barn light is also called the yard light. This type of light is mostly used on walls or poles, but you can use this light over the kitchen sink as well. These types of lights are energy-efficient, bright, and require no maintenance at all.

Barn light typically contains a gooseneck fixture that provides lighting in one direction that generally illuminates downward. The lighting spreads from the source and provides lighting all over the area.

Barn light varies in size and shape. While placing it over the kitchen sink, you need to know that you should measure the width of the sink and place the barn light right over the center of the sink. But the standard measurement would be 7 to 12-inch in width.

The placement of barn light is just a similar way of placing wall-mounted light. But make sure you place the barn light right over the center of the kitchen sink. So, you get the most lighting in the center of the kitchen sink.

7. Hanging light over kitchen sink

These types of lights are quite similar to the pendant lights. Hanging lights are a great source for illuminating your whole sink and kitchen area. There are many designs and unique textures of hanging lights in the marketplace.

Hanging lights are the focal point of kitchen decoration when you place them in the right area. These lights include single hanging or clusters hanging from the ceiling with a chain or connector. These lights have a wide range of usage such as in a room; in a big hall or even you can use this over the kitchen sink.

The placement will be in the center of the kitchen sink. The distance between the center of the kitchen sink and the hanging light should be 32-inch to 34-inch. Take the measurement from the ceiling to the center of the kitchen sink and determine the measurement of hanging lights.

8. Wall sconce light over kitchen sinks

The vintage shape and design of the sconce light give your kitchen a more artistic look. There are different types of sconce light available such as outward or upward sconces. The sconce lights are mostly upwards or outwards in shape, but downward lights are quite scarce in sconce light.

What is Sconce Light?Sconce lights are the kind of light fixture that gets fixed to the wall. This type of light is usually aimed upwards or outwards. Sconce light mostly contains classical designs, fixtures, and often called wall lights of wall lamps.

Sconce lights usually don’t have any form of size. If you have a big space over the kitchen sink, you can install a bigger sconce light, or for a small space, install smaller sconce light.

Installing the sconce light over the kitchen sink requires measuring the space from the center of the sink to where should sconce light illuminate. This will ensure the proper lighting over your kitchen sink.

Get the guide: Types of kitchen sink

9. Recessed light over kitchen sink

Recessed lighting is another form of lighting that you can use over your kitchen sink. Recessed lights require a hole in the ceiling and three main components.

Recessed light is mainly installed on ceilings, walls, or surfaces. It requires three major components to install, home ceiling, visible portion, and bulb.

The home ceiling provides the place for recessed light to be installed, visible portions of the light consist of shades or reflectors. The light or bulb is the main component of the recessed light.

Recessed lights will provide a flush look to your kitchen as it is installed within the kitchen ceiling. Expert suggests that you should install a combination of 6-inch recessed lights to light up your kitchen sink.

The ideal placement of the recessed lights should be away from 6 to 7 inches of the sink wall. This will ensure the proper lighting falls while reducing the shadows during your work.

10. Fluorescent light over kitchen sink

Fluorescent light is a good choice of kitchen lights as it provides task lighting quite efficiently and uses the minimum amount of electricity. These lights use low wattages, and that’s why they have a longer lifespan.

Fluorescent light is the most commonly used lighting in different grocery stores, offices, or homes. Fluorescent light generally works in a glass tube while creating a chemical reaction. The chemical reaction includes gases and mercury vapor to produce invisible UV light.

There are different sizes of Fluorescent lights to use over the kitchen sink. They are measured by the eighth of an inch size. T8, T5, and T12 (8/8 inch, 5/8 inch, 12/8 inch) are such sizes of Fluorescent light. Use the one that you may find convenient for using over the kitchen sink.

The placement of the Fluorescent light can be on the kitchen wall or the kitchen ceiling both. But you can use the kitchen ceiling if there’s any installation area. But most Fluorescent lights are used on the wall.

11. Ceiling light over kitchen sink

Ceiling lighting is one kind of recessed, pendant, or sconce lighting. When you talk about kitchen sink lighting, the expert suggests that the ceiling is the best choice among all of the lighting.

As we have told that ceiling lighting is one kind of recessed, pendant, or sconce lighting, these lighting types are installed on the ceiling or hanging from the ceiling to light up your kitchen.

If you use hanging lights from the ceiling, use the size of 32 to 36 inches of ceiling lights or use recessed lights that are mainly attached to the ceiling.

The placement of ceiling lights depends on the types and sizes. If you have a hanging one, place the lights above the center of the sink while measuring the ceiling to sink position.

12. Drop-in light over kitchen sink

Drop lights are unique sizes and shapes of light. Drop lights are generally used in garage or automotive working areas. But you can use this type of light over the kitchen sink for ambient lighting or normal lighting experience.

Most Drop lights consist of aluminum cages that create shields for the bulb. On the other hand, the drop lights of the kitchen have variations in design. This type of lighting is mostly used to shine the dim area or used for ambient lighting.

There are hanging drop lights or drop ceiling lights to use over the kitchen sink. The hanging drop lights usually hold cone shape designs, and the ceiling lights hold different T-bars, grids, or suspended ceiling lights.

The placements of the drop lights are quite similar to a pendant or hanging lights. Use 32 to 35 inches from the center of the sink to the ceiling to use drop hanging lights.

13. Track light over kitchen sink

Track lights are a versatile lighting option for kitchen sinks. These types of light can provide ambient and task lighting. There are many designs and shapes of track lighting for use over a kitchen sink.

The track lighting is installed on a track system that gets mounted to the wall or ceiling. You can customize the direction and lighting experience for track lighting. Track sections of the lights are joined via connectors in a straight line.

There are certain track lights to use over the kitchen sink. The J-style, L-style, or H-style track lighting is the most used one to use over the kitchen sink. The track size varies from 20 to 40 inches. Choose the appropriate one.

The placement of track lighting over the kitchen sink can be quite tricky. You can either place the track lights in the kitchen ceiling or use the wall to position the track light. Install a track to fit the track lights.

14. Rustic pendant light over kitchen sink

This old-fashioned but elegantly designed rustic lights are used by people who love to decorate their kitchen with classically designed lights. The rustic designed lights are mainly used in log homes or cabins.

The rustic lights are quite simple and old-fashioned in style and hold warm wood design and iron hardware design. Rustic lights are mainly installed in a semi-flush design below the ceiling while providing a minimal aesthetic view of your kitchen.

The placement of the rustic ceiling lights has varieties because of their design and shapes. You can either set them in the ceiling while in the hanging position or use them just like the track lighting while holding the lights with a log or wooden track.

15. Dimmable light fixture over kitchen sink

The dimmable lighting provides enhancing and matches the environment of your lighting. Dimmable lighting provides convenience to your office, commercial or industrial space.

Dimmable lights are a kind of ambient lighting that affects the brightness of your kitchen or home light and sets the different indoor environments. LED lights can be dimmable according to the set of their brightness level, low or high. Dimmable lights are generally used for mood lighting.

The most dimmable lights are placed on the ceiling or on the wall. Use the precise spot for dimmable lights to place over the kitchen sink.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

Conclusion

The above discussion over kitchen sink lighting ideas is the most frequently used lighting over the kitchen sink. Most people choose to install above kitchen sink lighting to decorate their kitchen and provide a great lighting experience.

Our recommendation will help you in decorating the lighting over the kitchen sink but make sure you choose the compact size, shape, and design to fit over the kitchen sink.