Low ceiling lights seize attention and adds sculptural interest to your home
PENDANT lighting is a practical and decorative asset that should instantly seize attention, adding sculptural interest up and into the air.
In singles or flocking together, low ceiling lights can do just about anything — from creating a feature, to general and ambient duty; to highly specific dedicated function roles.
Swing low
The ceiling is a huge surface with immense potential to add hugely to the layering of a full light-plan — and even the layout of any space.
Without intruding on walls or floors, you can rig a contemporary light array to manipulate the apparent height, or to focus and divide areas of the room.
Where pendants are least appreciated is abandoned on a short leash in a vast cavernous room.
The strangled, poorly-chosen chandelier, which looks beautiful when you can back up enough to see all its elements, is a common victim.
Flush fittings have their place, but a cord can drop a light neatly in to position, be it over a table, into the yawning vacant stories of an atrium or intimately over a book in your reading nook.
Cords have returned as a crucial ingredient in the entire body of the light-show, with retro style braided nylons acting as a compliment or foil to the character, colour and textural attractions of the shade.
Stout cords can even be hooked or wound up to the ceiling to vary the height of the pendant by occasion.
Many suppliers are now giving choices of cord colour as standard and in chandeliers funnels of glass can dress up bare electrics.
Keep in mind that the character of the light should be chosen with its final hanging height in mind.
Will you be seated or standing for its primary role?
Looking up and into the light — the interior of any modern dish or underside of a closed pendant or chandelier is crucial.
Playing up the appeal of the bulb itself? Watch that trend dim in the coming months.
Tom Dixon’s Beat pendants are the perfect choice for upward gazing at the dinner table, with their highly reflective, beaten copper interior.
From €386, www.williedugganlighting.com
Oslo Pendant — a real dish, €59 Next Direct.
Shady character
The shade will dictate the direction and what’s termed the diffusion of the light coming from the bulb or bulbs in any pendant.
Some closed metal pendants for example will only allow the light to be directed down to the floor.
This is a fantastic device for bringing an uncomfortably high hall ceiling down to earth.
The wider the circumference of these dish style pendants, the wider the beam, but the ceiling and walls will rely on the reflective quality of the floor to bounce the light back up.
Other shades in semi-opaque materials from fabric to feathers and even twisted cords, will allow some of the illumination to go out and up, diluting it to a soft glow.
Increasingly, makers are using shades to slice the light into fascinating rakes.
Voids in the design — be they pin points or gaps in ribbons of wood or plastics, give a slight glisten from the bulb together with shifting patterns of light which play on the walls and ceiling.
If you like this additional light show after hours, darken your wall colour dramatically.
Keep in mind that fabric, ribbons of timber, complex slotted Danish polypropylene and other busy designs will catch dirt more quickly than crisp, clean planes.
Moooi of Holland has a catalogue of beauties including Bertjan Pot’s much copied Random light (c.1999), a woven metal ball in fiberglass and steel, from €468, ambientedirect.com.
The IKEA PS 2014 is an articulated modern classic which recalls the shape of the Death Star in Star Wars. Pull the cord and it cranks open to raise light levels and reveal its juicy orange interior. €50
Groups, scale play and beautiful bars
Grouping ceiling supported light fittings has become very popular, going beyond 2-3 identical pendants to wider compositions of number, height and plays of scale.
For a safe start, you can use two or three identical pendants balanced off the size of your dining table or leading you down a corridor with classic symmetry overhead.
Small shades on long cords can recall stiff little blossoms if you fancy something dainty, giving maximum visibility to the area beyond the table.
For a more architectural feel choose multiple lights supported by a horizontal bar — Italian style fittings offer swirling clusters of LED light recalling stars and flowery glass boughs — pretty but assuredly modern.
Cascading designs of multiples can be bought as a pre-arranged group of shades and cords (take a look at the work of Arturo Alvarez available through Willie Duggan lighting) or arranged to your design by your electrician.
Go for a spider-leg group of bare bulbs and cord in a fanned approach and using hooks for the ceiling to support this splayed design — very now.
If you want to go it alone, get plenty of help, a good step ladder and suspend the pieces in position to get the place of each piece right to the last split metre.
Don’t forget to add up the wattage of each piece to the illumination needs of the space, be it a stairwell or an open plan living-room.
Introducing feature lighting, you can deliberately invoke relationships with appropriate architectural features and artwork.
Bar lighting is back with new flash in naked fittings and housings.
The LZF I-CLUB SLIM is finished in a wood veneer in a long box that would suit a desk or kitchen island situation, and will dress up even fluorescent light. Matching pieces available, €890 plus VAT, Willie Duggan Lighting.
Funk, part of a versatile ‘build it yourself’ lighting group of lamps, feature bulbs and multi-coloured shades and cords.
Shades from €75 (Funk 22) Complete Lighting Douglas, 021-4898 228, www.completelighting.ie
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