Ceiling Speakers For The Kitchen - Buying Guide
The kitchen, and often a connected dining/living room, is the most popular location for installing ceiling speakers due to the fact that people tend to spend a lot of time at home there. Our customers want to be able to listen to the radio whilst they drink their morning coffee or play their favourite playlist when they cook dinner and ceiling speakers offer a great way of filling the kitchen with high-quality audio without taking up any physical space. If you are thinking of installing ceiling speakers for your home, this guide will help you to decide whether you are looking for an active or passive solution, how many speakers you need and which speakers are going to work best for you.
- Active Or Passive Kitchen Ceiling Speakers?
- How Many Ceiling Speakers Do You Need In Your Kitchen?
- The Best Passive Kitchen Ceiling Speakers
- Amp Solutions for Passive Kitchen Systems
- The Best Active Kitchen Ceiling Speakers
Active or Passive Kitchen Ceiling Speakers?
The first question to ask yourself is whether you need active or passive speakers.
If you plan on having ceiling speakers throughout the whole house then a passive solution is often the best choice. Passive speakers require an amplifier to power them via speaker cable but through amplifiers from brands such as Sonos and Bluesound you can synchronise all the speakers throughout your home, giving you the ability to choose which zones are playing audio right from your phone. Many audiophiles will also agree that speakers powered by a proper amplifier will give you great quality audio too which is something to consider.
If you just want ceiling speakers in your kitchen with minimal hassle then active speakers may be the way to go. Active speakers have the amplifier built-in, meaning all they require is a connection to the mains power to operate. They typically offer WiFi or Bluetooth connectivity so you can connect to and control them directly from your phone, with the limitations of Bluetooth models being that they are generally restricted to one zone.
How Many Ceiling Speakers Do You Need In Your Kitchen?
The next thing to decide is how many speakers you need, and this depends on the size of your kitchen.
As a general rule, for rooms up to 3 metres x 3 metres we recommend going for a single stereo speaker, which you can read more about here. Single stereo speakers have two tweeters which allow them to produce true stereo sound from a single speaker and are a great solution for smaller zones of this size.
For kitchens up to 5 metres x 5 metres, we believe a pair of speakers works best to fill the area with sound.
For rooms up to 8 metres x 8 metres such as a kitchen/living room or kitchen/dining room combination we generally recommend four speakers to sufficiently fill the area with sound.
The Best Passive Kitchen Ceiling Speakers
Check out the collection Kitchen Ceiling Speakers for all our reccommended models.
If you are after passive ceiling speakers, we have selected a few of our favourite speakers for kitchens based on projects we have done in the past. We have put in a few different price points so you can work with your budget and, although there is definitely an increase in audio quality the more you pay, even our lower-end speakers will provide great quality audio for your home:
Wharfedale WCM-80 - Wharfedale’s WCM-80 model is relatively cheap for an 8-inch model, making it an excellent choice for audio quality on a budget. Through its polypropylene driver and pivoting titanium dome tweeter, this speaker delivers a big sound that will fill your kitchen.
Monitor Audio CS180R - The Monitor Audio CS180R represents a step up in audio quality from more entry-level speakers. The 8-inch bass driver delivers a powerful bass response with a pivoting C-CAM tweeter handling the high-level frequencies. An excellent choice for great sound in your kitchen.
Amp Solutions for Passive Kitchen Systems
You’ll need an amp to drive your passive ceiling speakers so we have selected here our two most popular solutions, based on whether you require just one zone being powered or whether the kitchen will be part of a wider whole-house audio system:
Sonos Amp -The Sonos Amp is one of our best-selling products. An ideal choice for a whole-house audio system, each amplifier outputs an impressive 125 watts per channel, getting the most out of your speakers and allowing you to link them up as zones and pick and choose where your audio plays via WiFi.
The Best Active Kitchen Ceiling Speakers
If you have decided to go for active ceiling speakers we have some great products from Lithe Audio, the leading manufacturer for speakers with built-in amplifiers:
Lithe Audio WF-650 WiFi Speakers - The WiFi pair both include a 6.5-inch bass driver and a 25mm tweeter, with the master model featuring the built-in amplifier with WiFi connectivity, capable of driving the slave speaker and providing great stereo sound for your kitchen. Multiple pairs can be synchronised across different areas.
Lithe Audio Bluetooth Speakers - The Bluetooth speakers both feature a 6.5-inch bass driver and a 25mm tweeter, with the master model featuring the built-in amplifier with Bluetooth connectivity which is able to drive the passive slave speaker. They will fill your kitchen with great stereo sound.
Check out the collection Kitchen Ceiling Speakers for all our reccommended models.
As always, we are more than happy to help you with any questions you have about buying an audio system and can even look over your floor plans to help you spec your perfect audio solution. You can submit a contact form here, email us at sales@ceiling-speakers.co.uk or just give us a ring on 03456 803 802.