What Factors To Consider Before Hanging Ceiling Lights/ Pendants?

Ceiling lights and pendants can become really bright and memorable additions to your room interior — if chosen wisely, of course. However, choosing ceiling and pendant lights that will showcase your room in the most stylish manner is not always easy. Even before you get started, pay attention to what factors to consider before hanging ceiling lights / pendants. The most important ones are as follows:

Ceiling height

Ceiling height is one of the primary factors that determines the choice of a chandelier and pendant lights, if any. The distance between the lowest end of the pendant and the floor should be about 1.8 meters — this is the optimal height that determines maximum comfort of usage and helps to avoid the clutter. That is, with a very high — or, on the contrary, very low — ceiling you will have to adjust the choice of your lighting source.

Distance from the nearest furniture piece

While searching for pendants, most people are looking to highlight another furniture piece — a bar stand, a dining table, etc. The optimal guideline is to allow at least 60-70 cm distance from the furniture piece. Once again, this is exactly the distance that allows maximum comfort of usage without creating any obstacles or cluttering the area you want to highlight.

Ambient lighting

Most ceiling and pendant lights serve decorative rather than strictly functional purpose. However, proper lighting in the room presupposes a balanced combination of ambient and decorative light sources. Ambient lighting is the lighting that allows to actually see enough to move across the room, while the decorative lighting makes the room bright and cosy. Once again, both are crucial to highlight the room properly.

Functional areas that need highlighting

In a big room, there will be way more functional areas to consider. While it is only obvious that in a dining room you will have to highlight not only the middle of the room, but also your dining area, in a kitchen you will have to be more thorough figuring out the right lighting placement. Serving table, kitchen island, breakfast area — all of those will require additional light sources to make the room ‘user-friendly’.

Style and interior

And, of course, the right choice of ceiling lights and pendants will also depend on the interior you are working with. And, it is not always as simple as ‘antique chandeliers for antique rooms, and modern ones — for modern rooms’. Quite often, you will have to search a way to play along to your architectural theme — for example, make use of your bare wooden beams or other eye catching architectural elements.

If you choose to go with pendant lights after all, the following tips on lighting should prove pretty helpful if you would like to decorate the room carefully and creatively. And, of course, you should not forget that the right choice of a store to shop with can also make a huge difference. Lighting sources can be bought both in specialised stores and in general furniture stores — and, ideally, you should find some time to check out both.