How to choose the right size chandelier

 This post is sponsored by Lamps Plus, as always, all opinions are 100% my own.

I’ve been procrastinating a bit on sharing our new dining room lighting, because, to be honest, our table was too small. Ha!  Some people might not think about the scale of a light fixture in a space, but the scale or relative size of the light fixture in relation to the room size, table size, and ceiling height all play a major role in choosing the right chandelier for a room.

I’ve had my eye on the Possini Euro Gable 10-light chandelier from Lamps Plus for a while now, even for our other home, however, I was facing the same issue:  small table AND we had a sloped ceiling–this fixture is not recommended for sloped ceilings.

So as soon as I reached out to Lamps Plus, I knew which light fixture I wanted to choose for our new dining room.  One of my favorite features of shopping on the Lamps Plus website, is being able to try out thousands of different chandeliers in your space.  It is so helpful in narrowing down the options.

Our previous table was about 55″ long and with a 40-inch chandelier, our kitchen table looked like it belonged in a doll house,  not a dining room with the 10 foot ceilings!

Our old dining room table with the Lamps Plus “view in your room” feature

din

If you follow along on my Instastories (you totally should!), you may remember the poll I had from the thrift store about the black, $12 table.  It was larger, but a similar style to our previous one.   And for $12 we were gladly able to make it work.

Once we replaced the table, I was able to let our big light shine, in it’s glory.

While the dining room isn’t quite complete, it’s quite an improvement from where we started:

Dining room before

Dining room before, real estate photo

So you may be wondering, how do you choose the right chandelier?

Well, I think what’s most important is narrowing down a style that suits your taste and style of home.  Our home is a Victorian, however,  I knew I wanted to go for a more modern, industrial vibe–something that would demand attention in the space.  However, I needed to decide on the scale of the fixture.

According to Lamps Plus, there are two ways to determine the correct size for your light fixture:

• By determining the size of the room
• By table width

By Room Size:

• According to the diagram above, a 12’x10′ room should have a chandelier that is 22″ wide.

• Our dining room is 13’x10′, which according to this, means my dining room should use a 23″ chandelier.  However, it’s also important to think of whether or not the space is an open floor plan, and the height of the ceilings.

• Our dining room has almost 10′ ceilings and is an open floor plan, which means that there’s quite a bit of leeway.  So I then referred to the next suggestion, which brings me back to my original point about my mini table.

By table width:

• Our smaller dining table was only 55″ wide.  The light fixture I chose was 40″ wide, which basically dwarfed my already small table.  Not to mention the table was too small for the room to begin with.

• Lamps Plus recommends a light fixture that is about 3/4 the size of your table width.  As a good rule of thumb, I would recommend a chandelier that is about half to 3/4 the size of your table, but also consider the size of your room, heigh of your ceilings and the openness of the space. For me, now with a table that is 70″ long, the size of my 40″ chandelier is much more appropriate.  (And if you look back at the before images of the dining room, you can see that a 23″ chandelier gets a bit lost in such a large, open space.)

I think my favorite thing about this light fixture is the contrast of it with the traditional ceiling medallion.  Seriously guys it just makes my heart skip a beat!

So what do you guys think?  Did I pick a winner?  I hope you found this post helpful.  Let me know if you have any questions below.

Thanks so much to Lamps Plus for sponsoring this post, I am truly in love with this chandelier!

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