Installing Under Cabinet Lighting – We have done a couple of upper cupboards in our kitchens and we actually haven’t installed under cabinet lighting in ANY of them. I came across many pictures of the setup process which I took way back in 2020.
It’s a straightforward procedure and therefore it could be an easy upgrade if you wanted more under cabinet lights in the kitchen, laundry room, or some additional room with upper cabinets.
These do not appear to be sold, but the current OMLOPP spotlight seems to be a comparable Variant.
The OMLOPP ones are currently LED ones and therefore have a lower accent profile, plus some cord management covers are included, which is great.
Installing Under Cabinet Lighting
Based on the downloadable instruction sheet, the new ones install nearly the same style, therefore the same basic steps I am about to outline for you here still apply.
Many individuals do spotlight per cupboard, but we wanted to give the appearance of a continuous bar of light, instead of different spotlights under each cupboard. Thus we chose to do more.
Steps for Installing Under Cabinet Lighting
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Step One – Unboxing and Pairing The Wiring
The first step, after everything is unpackaged, is to unbox the lightbulb portion of every spotlight out of its casing, leaving the wiring in place.
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Step Two – Routing The Power Lines Through The Cabinet Holes
This exposes the holes which you’re supposed to twist through to secure the light to the underside of your cabinet. Just be sure to evaluate and mark your placement before you start doing so.
We centered each spotlight front-to-back on the cabinet and spaced them evenly apart side-by-side (around 10″ away from the next one).
We secured ours using 1/2″ screws so that they wouldn’t poke through the interior of the cupboard. Then the light simply snaps back into position.
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Step Three – Installing The Wires
Once all your spotlights are procured, you need to connect everything to the mains. This is sold individually from the new OMLOPP spotlights, as is the power cable.
I know that sounds kinda mad, but they sell things a la carte like this because the number of transformers and power cords you need depends on how many spotlights you’re installing (you can add up to 9 spotlights per box, as well as 10 boxes each power cord).
However, wiring the new stuff is much simpler – it’s essentially like plugging in a telephone charger.
At this stage, the cord situation will not be too pretty, but before dealing with this it is almost always a fantastic idea to test that all of your connections work. Therefore it was super simple to find ours working within moments.
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Step Four – Adding Wire Covers & Tugging The Wiring
The newer spotlights include some wire covers to help in hiding the wires at the base of the cupboard, but you still may need to get creative with all of the extra cables between the cupboard and the switchboard.
I picked up a variety of cord management options from the shop and the most helpful items ended up being lifting ties (essentially a zip tie using a screw hole) and a few cable staples (you may want to swap in various screws or nails if the supplied ones have been long enough to poke your cupboard bottom).
Yours probably won’t look quite this messy with the more recent system. I wrapped up most of the surplus cables with a zip tie (screwed in place) and then kept everything tight to the bottom using the wire staples.
You see zero of this chaos as a result of a cover piece that you add afterward. You would pretty much have to lean over the washer and drier and put your mind under the cupboard to have a fantastic look at it when it’s boxed in with that cover bit, but I’ll get to this in a minute.
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Step Five – More Cable Management
Back into the whole”cable management” thing. You also must locate somewhere to hide your mains box.
Ours got mounted behind a gap on the side of a single cabinet that’s concealed with a filler bit in the front of it (the mains box includes holes for mounting it using screws).
That placement also allowed the power cord to hug the corner as it rips down to the outlet.
A few years after our first installation we had an electrician hardwire the power cord to a change on the wall, and that makes it even easier to turn off and on. However, if there was a wire tucked along that left corner, it wasn’t really that awful.
Yet another word about the mains box: I really think a more popular place for this is ON TOP of your cabinets, but you may need to install an outlet up there.
Ikea sells a remote so that you can turn everything off and on without even needing to have access to this power cable button. Pretty smart.
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The very last thing we did was to install that wire cover strip I mentioned across the bottom of the cabinetry to hide the lights and their own wiring.
It is just a spare filler bit that Ikea sells, mounted in position using little L-brackets and caulked in the seams.
We don’t mind the cover piece on the bottom, but I really do feel like it’s a shortcoming of this Ikea system. The glare leaks were not a problem in this setup.
Their cabinets are flat on the ground instead of many different cabinets with a slightly recessed area that’s great for tucking light into. That is probably why they have enhanced this new system by providing it with a thinner profile and including cord covers.
I really don’t have my receipts stored from this project, but the same setup with the new system would be approximately $75 ($90 if you include the distance).
And you could cut down the cost to about $45 in case you did three lights and used those smaller switchboards.
Materials Needed For Installing Under Cabinet Lighting
- Good Standard Under Lighting Bulbs
- 1/2″ screws
- Power cords
- Main Switches
- Wire covers
- A Drill
- One Way Zip Ties
- Cable Staples
Summing It Up
The switch we had installed turns on quickly. We probably only use these lights around 50 percent of the time, just because the ceiling light is really adequate for such a small space, but we think that they’re a “nice to have” upgrade. Especially in case, you’ve got a place which can use a little extra light.
