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30 | Kitchen & Bath Design News | July 2015 By Kim Berndtson Lighting Trends K itchen and bath designers spend countless hours creating functional footprints, then add - ing just the right materials and products that take the design to the next level. But all can be for naught without consider- ing how lighting afects the space. "Lighting is everything [to a de- sign]," says Michelle Fee, of the Atlanta GA-based Change Your Bathroom. "That's evident when you consider how much money showrooms spend on lighting to showcase their beautiful designs, tiles, etc. Then you take them home and the grays and browns look dingy and the whites aren't as white. That's the diference between having great lighting and not having great lighting. Everything relies on light." For Amanda Haytaian, of House of Cline Design in Little Silver, NJ, lighting can add something special to the space. "It's the jewelry to the room," she says. "I like to include lights that make a room look attractive even when it isn't being used. For example, in a kitchen, I like to include interior cabinet and undercabinet lighting or sconces on separate switches from high hats so, depending on the time of day or the task, they can have a pretty light without all the lights being on." These days, lighting in kitchens and baths is more and more about LEDs, especially for general lighting in high hat/recessed cans and task and accent lighting in puck and tape/ strip lights. Even pendants as well as chandeliers and sconces are more commonly available with LED options. As such, many designers incor- porate LED lights in most of their designs. "It has been a long time since I've done a project that hasn't included LEDs," says Karyn Judd Reilly, CKD in Winston Salem, NC. "They are a stan- dard part of my designs." Chris Chumbley, USI Design & Remodeling in Prairie, TX, agrees. "We use LEDs for practically every application now," he says. "There re- Lighting is becoming increasingly important in today's kitchen and bath designs, and with a greater availability of LED lighting options, those designs can be more interesting, functional and fun to create.