Kitchen Pendant Lights Are So Hot Right Now

Think of pendant lights as your kitchen’s bling. Like any hot, new accessory, this important kitchen fixture is easy to choose, quick to install, and can make the difference between your kitchen being boring or beautiful.

The kitchen pendant light isn’t just about appearances, however. It can help out by providing lighting during everyday tasks, set a mood or ambiance, and even make it super-easy to clean and dust the light fittings in that area. If this is starting to sound tempting to you, here’s a quick-read guide to help you choose the perfect pendant light for your kitchen.

This is How to Get the Right Pendant Light

Why pendant lights really took off as the must-have kitchen installation is because of the incredible variety of styles they offer the homeowner. But don’t allow the way this light fitting looks be the only deciding factor.

Functionality Over Form

The pendant light’s different decorative forms can sometimes detract from the main purpose of lighting in the kitchen: to be practical and functional first, and to add to the aesthetic, second. Give some thought to what type of illumination your kitchen needs in that area. This is why you most often see pendant lights positioned over a kitchen island or dining area.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What type of lighting do I have already?
  • What type of lighting do I need in the area where I plan to hang the pendant lights?
  • Does the ceiling in that area lend itself well to the type of pendant light I have chosen?

The answers depend on what type of light and space you already have. If your kitchen has natural light streaming in from the windows, you only need pendant lights to add ambience during the day. If you can’t see what you’re doing at your countertop, you need to augment the lighting in that area. A kitchen that has recessed or pot lights in the ceiling already might only need additional decorative flair to catch the eye.

Consider what lighting exists already, and then choose pendant lights that will help you fill in the gaps.

Lighting for Kitchen Tasks

Task lights are there to illuminate any target area where you need help to see better while working. You’ll want your pendant lights to brighten the places where you chop, where you read your cookbooks, or where you remote work from home on your laptop.

You’ll need a light fixture that aims the illumination downwards. The type of pendant light best for this work is one the opens at the bottom or is translucent enough to allow a high degree of lighting out.

An open-bottom pendant light with a powerful bulb can create quite a harsh beam. You can offset this by lowering the output bulb or installing a dimmer switch that enables you to change the wattage output when the mood requires it.

Ambience

Gentle illumination is one of the key aspects provided by general lighting. It refers to how the space is perceived as a whole, instead of spotlighting only one section of it. If you need your pendant lights to help brighten up the entire room, this doesn’t always correlate to bigger means better.

A large pendant with a single bulb doesn’t add much when called upon to provide you with adequate illumination. Consider using a pendant fixture with multiple bulbs or adding multiple pendants spread around the space. Also, don’t forget to take your cooking skills into the equation. If you use your island for chef-like prep work, then you need light! If the island in your kitchen is more likely to have people gathered around it chatting over a bottle of wine, don’t stress over the brightness factor too much.

Choose Your Accents

Decorators get very excited when they start talking about accent lighting to highlight something special. This alluring design feature is when the light is positioned to accent a particularly beautiful recess or piece.

Pendant lighting is not used to accent a targeted area, per se. But if you have a gorgeous marble countertop or outstanding antique dining table as your workbench, placing the right pendant lighting over it could be exactly what it needs. You won’t only see this pendant lighting accenting going on in all the hottest new kitchens in homes either. Restaurants and wine bars are crazy about this “beautifying with light” trend too.

And Finally, We Get to the Decorative Bit

Pendant lighting looks as though it was created to be purely a decorative feature. When you think of the fixture itself and the fluid blending of light and shade it produces, this is the definitive essence of what decoration stands for.

Even if your kitchen already has sufficient lighting for tasks and enough ambiance in the kitchen space, you can still feel free to select one of the elegant and attractive pendants and add it to your kitchen. There, it can glow softly or break up the space between the ceiling and the countertops. Either way, your pendant lights will create a big impression on visitors and the family. They will also add to the value of your property as a whole.

Pendant lights don’t always have to be about casting a targeted light. If you have plans to make the lighting the star feature in your kitchen, keep an eye out for pendant fixtures that cast an intricate or interesting shadow on the ceiling and walls. In that way, the eye will be drawn over the room as a whole, especially at certain times of the day and season.

Remember that illumination can be both engaging and decorative – while still giving out functional downward lighting for tasks, upward lighting to showcase a tile ceiling, and outward lighting to help brighten the space entirely. If you have a clear vision about what role you want your pendant lighting to fill, this will help you choose the perfect lighting for your kitchen that also looks great.

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