Its worth talking to lots of people/places, last year I had at least six design and quotes for my large open plan kitchen and living area. Quotes varied between £9k-£24k (after negotiation) and designs were in the main very boring. The best one that had the most different ideas that really worked for us was from Ikea. You just need somebody who has imagination and listens to you, about how you use the space and respects your likes and dislikes, sometimes that person is in the most unlikely place. Keep going until you are happy, you don't need to pay a fortune either.

Yes we would suggest using wall mounted lights or spotlights for highlighting features or contour strips for behind the shelves. On our website we have a whole selection of other kitchen and room ideas that you can take a look at: http://www.johncullenlighting.com/portfolio/project-showcase/kitchen-lighting/.

I'm not sure it is such a large recess that you would get a way with making a feature of it as mentioned above. A dropped ceiling with LED would be more appropriate, but that is likely to cost more than simply having the fluorescent taken out an the hole boarded and plastered. There are large LED panel fittings for sale on Bay, but the max. size of these seems to be 30 x 120, which is too small to fill or cover your gap. If you are looking for an inexpensive solution, then you (or a handy local electrician) could try making your own light fitting on a dropped panel to cover it over - something that fits the scale and proportion of the room better than that recess does! (it's not clear how the recess is positioned in relation to the other structures in the room, but here's a couple of ideas...) It's probable, though, that you are relying on this one source of light too much. Even if you have a very bright light on your kitchen ceiling there will still be shadows cast that will stop you from being able to see when you're using your work surfaces, unless you have strategically placed LED downlighter recessed in the ceiling. Perhaps you could think about fitting some LED strips under your wall cabinets to provide some bright task lighting over your worktops. IKEA has a great solution for this and if you do it you'll find you don't need to worry about the quality of light from above quite so much, which then broadens the range of single pendant fittings you could look at using. The strips also provide great mood lighting when the kitchen is not being used :)

Yes that weird wall hanging . That can be removed and we are hoping it will create a more natural flow as currently makes that area much darker. Along itself obviously won’t bring in more natural light but optically might make the place brighter as won’t be there an object . We were thinking to remove the wall along the stairs as it’s not a load baring wall but because it’s a 3 story house you can’t from a. Fire build reg point of view .