In many homes a kitchen is no longer just a kitchen: it’s also a dining room, breakfast bar, family seating area and indoor-outdoor space. Each of these individual spaces has to work in its own right, but the room has to work as a whole too.
Zoning the individual areas with light is key, with circuits that can be separated out. For examples you might want to create intimacy over the dining table whilst not lighting up the washing up, you might want great task lighting over the island that dims to nothing when its job is done.
As with all rooms, it’s helpful to think first about ‘what’s interesting about this space’. This might prompt lighting of artwork, or a lovely stone wall, or wall lights framing an entrance. Uniformity is not important, lighting what you want to look at is.