Pendant Lighting Length and Hanging Guide

What is the best height for hanging a pendant light over a kitchen counter, dining table or even in your living room?

This is the question we are asked most often by our customers and one of the most important parts of your light installation process. After all, who wants to bump their head on a beautiful glass pendant? We certainly don’t.
Below is our simple quick and simple guide to hanging ceiling lights such as pendants or chandeliers over the most common types of furniture and in a normal space. We have covered kitchen counters / kitchen islands, dining tables and even at the best heights for walking clearance.

01 - Find your preferences

Its important to find your personal preference for your space when hanging lighting. We recommend picking up a measuring tape, and sitting or standing at the space. Start to take some measurements of lengths that ‘feel right’. You may want to take note of the light size or standard lengths of shades that your thinking of purchasing.
Take your rough preferences and compare these to the lights your purchasing. For example, our fabric cable pendant lights are designed to be easily adjustable by your electrician, so you can be more flexible with your length. If your looking at fixed length light with a tube, then this preference is even more important for determining the perfect lighting height.

02 - Compare your preference to our suggestions below

As a bespoke lighting company we have tested and fitted so many pendants and chandeliers that we now have a good set of reference lengths. Spacing between lights, as well as your worktops help create balance in space design. Take your preference lengths and simply compare to our lengths seen below. By comparing you can start to understand if your lights might be too close or too far apart, but don’t forget, our lighting lengths are just a benchmark to base your lighting on! Use these as a guide to avoid mistakes.

Here are our recommended heights:

Hanging lights over a dining table: 28-34" (58-86cm)

Hanging lights over a kitchen Island: 30-40"  (76- 101cm)  Approx 12"-18" apart when using more than one

Standard hanging of lights over a floor (walking clearance): 84-96” (213cm- 243cm)

03 - Choosing lengths on purchase of your lights

Did you know you can choose your length when your purchase our lights? We will hand-build the light to your desired length.
There are two ways to tell us your desired length:

If buying a fabric cable pendant like our reeded pendant lights, you can simply leave a buyers comment with you desired total or cable length. By default we provide 1 meter of cable length, which can be adjusted to your desired length by your electrician.
If buying a solid stem light like a brass triple arm chandelier, you can use the choices of tube length on each listing to find your desired length . We include all the details and length calculations in the product details on each light.

And Thats it! Hanging your lights and the perfect length is that easy. We hope this quick guide has helped and as always we encourage all of our customers to get in touch via our contact page if you have any further questions!
Have any other lighting topics you would like to see as a blog? Let us know via our contact page.
If your ready to start shopping for lights, you can explore our pendants lights and chandeliers here.