4" cans are for accent lighting, not main room lighting.
I agree, in that I don't care for the very narrow beam that they send down. But that seems to be all the rage these days. A friend who's a lighting designer said that's 90% of what he puts in these days. My parents had them put in the kitchen, and the contractor also put them in the adjoining living room; which I agree is a bad choice because it makes light and dark areas. But they like the "look" (which will be dated soon), which doesn't have much to do with function, but aesthetics.
Nobody likes huge fluorescent tubes because they seem "too" diffuse, so they seem to go 180 degrees the other way and get these tiny spot lights everywhere. It's a trend and people like the small point source of light, but I think that's exactly the wrong place to use that type of light. If you want to use those under a counter, fine, but I'd still prefer a fluorescent strip for that use. If you're going for the contrast of light and dark areas (cozy?), maybe 4" cans work for that, but I'd prefer to see everywhere!
I think people have gotten a bad taste for fluorescent lights and are rejecting them subconciously. i.e. 6000k fluorescent 4' strip lights look terrible, I get it, but you don't have to go back to 1920's halogen point source lights to be retro. Sure restaurants want to be cool and use old school filament bulbs, great, I get it, but I want to be able to see when I'm in my house. Get some good color Rendering (>80 CRI) 4100k color temp bulbs and use them evenly distributed and you'd be suprised. I personally only use 4100k bulbs, 3500 isn't terrible, but 5000k just makes it washed out. fluorescents are like plastic, sure you can make cheap c$ap out of them, but you can also make nice things out of plastic; just make sure you're net getting c$ap bulbs. You want to pay 2$ for a CFL? you're gonna get short lived bad light. I just dropped $300 on CFLs from 1000bulbs.com on their TCP brand 4100k, 81CRI, 71 lumen/watt 13w bulbs for the house ~5$ a bulb. I've had them before, they last forever and I like the color.
Sorry for the rant, hope other people find this stuff as interesting as I do :whistling2:
btw, I think that kitchen fltdek did DOES look good, except I don't care for the hotspots that 4" bulbs, I know they aren't "cool" right now, but basically I laid out why I think so above.