“Draw your dream bedroom!”
That was the (somewhat odd) assignment from my sixth grade teacher.
My friends were drawing arcades and zoos in their rooms. Not me. I enthusiastically drew my room exactly as it was with one small addition, a beautiful chandelier. Haha! My love affair with lighting clearly started at a very young age.
Now I get to dabble with lighting almost everyday and I continue to love what a gorgeous light fixture or set of lamps can do for space.
A great light fixture can almost make you entirely overlook furniture that may not be the most up to date. That’s why it is one of the things that we often recommend to our real estate staging clients to freshen up the look and feel of their home (usually a dining room) during a Styling Evaluation.
The problem is that designer lighting can be so dang expensive these days. But you know me, I’m a bargain hunter at heart so, at the bottom of the post I am sharing some of my favorite high/low lighting!
And there are some really cool fixtures there by iconic designers that have lovely, low cost copycats. Like this amazing Arteriors fixture:
Or this Jonathan Adler:
But, you’ve got to know some basics–and a little bit of math–to get your light fixtures right. And you know what, I’m gonna give them to you!
3 Brilliant ; ) Lighting Calculations
Width or Diameter
This rule of thumb applies for getting the width right of a chandelier, pendant or flushmount for rooms like living rooms, bedrooms, and foyers. This is not the formula you use for a light fixture going over a table
Measure the length and width of your room in feet and add them together. That number will become the approximate number of inches in width that you are looking for,
For a room that is 12′ x 15′ you will get:
12 + 15 + 27
So 27″ plus or minus an inch or tow is what you are looking for in width
Height
There are a couple of ways to get the correct height for your light fixture. Again, this is for going in most rooms but not over a table or island.
Start by measuring the height of the room in feet. Multiply that height by 2.5 or 3. Just like above, you will just switch the feet for inches.
For a room that is 9′ high you will get:
9 x 2.5 = 22.5″
or
9 x 3 = 27″
But….you also need to consider Clearance
Clearance: How low can you go?
- For any light fixture that people will walk under, you want your light to hang no lower than 7′
- In a hallway, light fixtures should hang at least 6″ above the door frame
- Over a bathtub, you should ideally have 8′ between the top of the tub and the bottom of the fixture
- In a two story foyer, the bottom of the light fixture should hang at the level the second floor
Onto The Good Stuff!
Oh and before you go, if you haven’t grabbed your FREE copy of my e-book “Sell Your House In 72 Hours” you can get that here. There’s so much good stuff in there about how to get your own house or a client’s house ready to sell. Let there be light!
xo,
What finishes for chandeliers are timeless?
Hi Ruth! Great question–I actually think that all of the finishes are timeless. The issue is more the style of the chandelier. Today’s buyers are loving simple, streamlined fixtures so fixtures with a lot of cut crystals and anything that is super scrolly and reminiscent of the tuscan trend are not the way to go.