Looking to freshen up your home with some new pendant lights but put off by the amount of choice?
Choosing the right pendant can seem overwhelming and often ends in frustration, sometimes even resulting in pendants being passed over for the trusty kiwi go to “downlight”. But when suspended from the ceiling, pendant lights are great for providing task lighting and shouldn’t be overlooked when designing your lighting.
With all the style options, colours and materials now available in pendant lights, function and stylish can easily come together in your home.
To assist you through your decision we have put together a few guiding principles to help you.
Things to consider when picking your pendant lighting:
Ask yourself two basic questions?
- What is the purpose of the space you are intending to light up? for example is it a multi-purpose room where you may spread out a puzzle to work through or sit back and relax in? If that’s the case for you, then different levels of light may be required.
- How much light do you need in this area? Is the current amount of light enough, too dull or too bright?
Considering these two basic questions up front, will make it much easier to “cull” unsuitable options from your consideration set, making it easier to select your pendant lighting.
How to select the best shape and size for your space.
Ensure your pendant is proportionate to your space. Depending on the size of your space, the size of the pendant will vary. The larger your room, the bigger the pendant should be. Larger rooms will also benefit from pendants that have prominent features, as small detail can be lost. Wider rooms can benefit from wider styles, versus smaller rooms that will benefit from petite shades or long/slim pendants, which make your room look and feel more balanced.
When selecting lighting for your kitchen island, combining multiple pendants along the length of your island will offer better illumination for tasks but also balance the lighting with the space more proportionally. Whatever you’re wanting to light up always think scale, scale, scale.
How much light output do you need?
Make sure you choose a bulb that gives you enough light for the purpose of the space.
Start with colour temperature. For indoor use you’ll want to select a “warm white” which emits a more inviting light for your home environment. When reading the specification on the product box ‘warm white’ is approx. 2500-3500 kelvins.
Secondly you need to select how many lumens you need for your space. This largely comes down to the purpose of your room. For a multitask space such as a dining area we’d recommend a light output of approx. 1500-2500 lumens.
Buyer Tip: Many pendants now come with built in LED’s. Check the lumen output to ensure it meets your needs.
If you are converting to LED for the first time, see our helpful LED conversion chart to help guide you to the right LED wattage to match your current light bulb output.
Which style will suit you best?
It’s very easy to get caught up in the latest trends. We recommend selecting pendants to suit the style of your house, rather than the other way around. This way your pendant lighting will highlight and compliment a space, rather than stand out and look out of place.
All Eurotech stockists offer an ‘Appro’ service, which allows you can take a sample light fitting home to see if it suits your space. Find a stockist near you.
For more information or advice feel free to reach out to our friendly team on: 09 818 6039, info@eurotechlighting.co.nz or come and visit our showroom: 11 Westward Ho Road, Glen Eden, Auckland
