General Home Lighting, Home Lighting

Design Trend: Pendant Lighting

design trend pendant lighting home

Pendant lighting isn’t so much a lighting design trend as it is an enduring classic. The shifting popularity of various colours and materials may change the overall style, but thanks to its easy-to-update nature, pendant lighting remains a useful and versatile source of illumination in many homes. Let’s take a look closer look:

Fixtures

The overall silhouette of a pendant lamp remains largely unchanged despite other updates in style, so if it’s just the pendant you’re unhappy with, it’s easy to upgrade your current lamp with a new shade or cover.

2018 styles embrace an updated vintage look for pendant lighting—think art deco, mid-century modern, and a more artistic, softer take on industrial. Whether you are installing pendant lamps for the first time or are simply updating your current fixtures, look for:

  • Minimalist, low-profile fixtures with clean lines, and sleek looking materials with flat and matte finishes.
  • A return to slow design and artisanal pendants made of natural materials and textures like metal, marble, wood, and glass.
  • Geometric shapes and large, oversized pendants that double as statement or centrepieces, or even artwork.
  • For colours, seek out brass, soft gold, greige—a portmanteau of grey and beige—and enduring favourites copper and rose gold:

Rooms

Adjustable cord lengths and hooks make it easy to add pendant lighting just about anywhere in your home, so long as people won’t be walking into them. Make sure you leave enough clearance that people won’t have to crouch down, or place them over tables and other areas that aren’t commonly traversed. Here are some areas in each room where they’ll look good, and areas you should avoid:

  • Bedroom: Bedside pendant lamps are replacing traditional reading lamps—they look good, and they take up less space on your bedside table.
  • Kitchen: Place pendants over islands and kitchen tables, leaving enough space to pass items easily under them—about 30-40 inches, depending on the look you want and how much vertical space is available.
  • Living Room: Hang pendants over side and coffee tables in place of floor and table lamps.
  • Dining Room: Pendant lights look wonderful spaced evenly over the length of a rectangular table, dramatically clustered at the centre of the table, or with a single large, bold statement pendant in place of a chandelier. Don’t be afraid to play around with their placement using hooks to create a look that you love.
  • Entryway: Pendant lighting can create a bold and dramatic statement that sets the tone for your house, especially if your entryway is two stories.
  • Areas to avoid: Rooms with especially low ceilings, where pendant lamps can eat up vertical space and get in the way.

Light Bulbs

You’ll likely have seen bare bulb pendants in exposed brick cafes and trendy restaurants. It is an eclectic, industrial look that adds a warm and inviting ambience to any space, and it’s also a great opportunity to show off some of the more unique looking light bulbs, including the visually appealing shapes of designer bulbs:

Filament Bulbs

Carbon filament bulbs, also known as Edison bulbs, are always a popular choice for pendants because they provide a soft, warm glow and a classic look that is easy on the eyes. You can also mix and match their shapes for a unique look that is still unifying:

For those who are looking for an energy-efficient but-still-aesthetically-pleasing option, LED Edison bulbs are also available:

Castello Style branded LED filament bulbs are ideal for businesses like cafes, restaurants, and retail stores hoping to create a warm, elegant glow:

Check out our full range of Castello Style LED filament bulbs.

Find The Perfect Pendant

For additional aesthetics and an especially warm glow, look for something with a gold finish.

Pendant lighting is an elegant and infinitely updateable option that’s perfect if you don’t have a lot of floor space to work with.

Do you have questions about pendant lighting? Contact our experts using our live chat feature. You can also get in touch via email at [email protected] or by phone at +44 (01869) 362222.

Shop our full range of pendant lamp fittings.

author-avatar

About Nicky Walker

Nicola is a lighting specialist at The Lightbulb Company with a keen awareness of the important role lighting plays in our everyday lives. She enjoys discovering new ways in which lighting can affect science, mental health and of course, most of all, reduce our carbon footprints.