Choosing the right lighting for your kitchen and dining room is essential for creating a welcoming and aesthetically pleasing environment. Catering for special occasions and family gatherings. Here are our recommendations for achieving dining table excellence.
1.Choosing the right light
Rocco: If you are looking for down lighting for worktop surfaces, we recommend our Rocco pendant shades. While functionality is essential for any task, the Rocco shades provide direct illumination that beautifully lights up your work area. Available in two sizes to adjust to your space.
Prismatic: Glass lighting will beautifully reflect, disperse and retract light, helping light to bounce around the room, whilst not detracting from the rest of your interiors. This shade is available in different shapes and sizes to adjust to each lighting need.
Factory: Our factory pendant, a task-oriented utility shade that compliments many modern and period vintage styles, the unique vented top provides an ambient room light, dispersing light evenly throughout the room. Available in two sizes and multiple colours
2. How many
Firstly, you should measure the length of the kitchen island, but also the width. The size of this will help you to gauge how many you could comfortably hang here without it looking overpowered, or sparse.
If your kitchen is 2m and under our suggestion is to hang only two pendants. While this does go against the golden ratio, two pendants will sit beautifully within these measurements.
For larger kitchen islands that can support more pendant lighting, it's recommended to start with at least three fixtures and increase this by odds where necessary. The rule of odds in design suggests grouping elements in an odd number creates a more visually appealing and balanced environment. This is an important principle when lighting your kitchen island, ensuring the space is functional and aesthetically pleasing.
As a general rule of thumb, you want your pendant lights to be at least 24 inches apart. But 30-32 inches is the optimal distance between pendants.
3. Height
Generally, pendant lights should be hung 30-32 inches above the worktop of the kitchen island to the base of the pendant light shade. That space in-between is key to making sure you have a visual connection between your island and the pendant light fixture above. If you do have taller ceilings, you can play around with the heights of the pendants a little bit more. They should be around head height but should not be high enough that you are not looking directly into the light source when standing. You should also be careful not to block the line of sight.
4. Lighting a dining table
Lighting for a dining table plays a crucial role as it should serve multiple purposes. It needs to offer consistent light across the table, foster a warm atmosphere, and help with kitchen zoning. This ensures that the dining area remains a focal point, even during the day, clearly marking it as a space for meals.
The size of your dining table will help decide how many pendants you will be needing. For smaller tables consider a singular pendant to create more of a focal point, while also creating an even space. For larger tables you might want to consider multiple pendants to evenly space the light.
Following these guidelines will help you achieve a visually pleasing and balanced kitchen island that remains functional and efficient.
