Pendant Lights and Hanging Them Properly

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Pendant Lights and Hanging Them Properly

Heights over tables and islands, spacing, bulbs and installation

Pendant lighting is chosen for how it looks and judged on whether you can sit under it comfortably, which comes down to a few measurements.

Height over a table

Around 75 to 90 centimetres from the table surface to the bottom of the shade. That is low enough to light the table and high enough to see across it.

Over a kitchen island, around 75 to 85 centimetres from the worktop, checked against the eye level of whoever stands there most.

Spacing and scale

For several pendants over a run, space them evenly and keep the outer ones inset from the ends of the table rather than aligned with the edge. A rough guide is a pendant diameter of around a third of the table width for a single fitting.

Odd numbers usually look better than even ones over a long table.

Glare

An open-bottomed shade at eye level puts a bare bulb in your face. Use a diffuser, a frosted bulb, or a shade that conceals the source, and put pendants on a dimmer.

Bulbs and colour

Around 2700K for dining and living spaces, 3000K for kitchens, kept consistent within a room. A colour rendering index above 90 makes food and skin look natural.

Check whether the fitting takes a replaceable bulb, since integrated LEDs set the life of the whole light.

Installation

A pendant must hang from a proper fixing into structure rather than a ceiling rose plate alone, particularly anything heavy. Electrical work of this kind belongs with a qualified electrician.

Check the ceiling height, since a low ceiling rules out long drops entirely.

Lighting a whole room

Three layers — ambient overhead, task lighting where you read or work, and something low and warm for the evening. A single ceiling light is why many rooms feel flat.

Put as much as possible on dimmers and use lamps in the evening rather than the main light.

Buying

Check the drop length, whether the cable can be shortened, and the bulb fitting and maximum wattage before ordering.

Energy and bulbs

LED bulbs use a fraction of the electricity of the filament bulbs they replaced and last for years. Compare lumens rather than watts, since lumens describe the light and watts only the power drawn.

Check whether a bulb is dimmable and that the dimmer is rated for LED loads, or you get flicker and buzzing.

Keep colour temperature consistent within a room, since mixing warm and cool looks wrong.

Layers

One pendant is rarely enough. Add lamps and task lighting.

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