How often do you open a closet or pantry door and think, wow, it’s way too bright in here?  Me too.  We installed a small pantry in our kitchen several kitchen remodels ago.  That’s correct, our kitchen has been an evolving remodel job including tearing up ceramic tile floor which I would seriously recommend against.  As part of one of these remodels we had the idea to optimize a dead corner of the kitchen and turn it into a pantry.  Rather than purchase a matching cabinet we opted to build it into the existing wall system complete with a door.  Somewhere along the way we also added wire shelving to the inside of door to maximize accessibility to those items that were too easily lost in the shelving.  I now often wonder where did we put all of this stuff before the pantry was built?

While the pantry is nice, seeing what is in there left something to be desired.  Even with our somewhat well lit kitchen (I am told you can never have enough light in a kitchen), the inside of the pantry was naturally dark and filling it with stuff just added to blocking out any light that was available.  I considered installing a light in the ceiling with a switch and quickly came to the conclusion that it would just be another light that would be left switched on after the pantry door was closed.  I also was not enamored with the idea of a single light at the top of the cabinet given the items on the first and second shelf would pretty much block the light from making its way to the lower shelves and thus only solve part of the problem.

This is where the idea of using LED strip lights came in.  These things throw a ton of well dispersed light and are dirt cheap.  They run off of low-voltage 12 VDC. Most of them come with a power supply and you can get them in different colors of white (or even reds and greens if for some strange reason you want that color in your closet or pantry).  They have an adhesive strip on the back and can be cut to size.  I would suggest also finding a means of mechanically attaching them at several places.

Switch on Jam and Magnet on Door

It just so happened that this closet already had an AC outlet inside of it given the back of the pantry was previously one of the kitchen walls.  You may need to have an outlet installed to find a place to plug in that 12 VDC supply.

That left me with devising a method to turn them on and off.  Sticking to my guns of not having a another switch in the house that can left turned on, I decided to have the lights turn on and off by the opening/closing of the door.  I mounted a 3-way reed switch on the door jam and a magnet at the top of the door.  I could have done a better job of hiding these wires but this the inside of a pantry after all. The switch offered a set of closed contacts when the door was open with those same contacts going open when the door was closed.  The LED light strip was run down the inside of the inner door trim and is basically not visible unless you are really looking for it.  I was planning to place a strip of lights on each side but the one strip proved to be plenty of light. Problem solved and it throws a lot of light.  Now we just need to close the door when we finish in there!  While the power for these lights is low voltage, be sure that any wiring conforms to your local electrical codes.

Pantry After Lighting

Pantry Before Lighting

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