An illumination system for a cooking appliance is capable of illuminating generally downwardly onto the cooktop burners of the cooking appliance using multiple illumination schemes. One illumination scheme may be used to indicate which cooktop burner is controlled by a particular burner control that a user is interacting with prior to activation of the cooktop burner, e.g., to indicate to a user that a burner control that the user has touched or is otherwise proximate to controls a particular cooktop burner. Another illumination scheme may be used to indicate which cooktop burner is being adjusted when a user is adjusting a particular burner control, e.g., to indicate to a user that a burner control that the user is currently manipulating is changing the output of a particular cooktop burner.