Suspended Lights, Hanging Lights & Lanterns

Ideas for home decorating with suspended lights such as hanging lights and lanterns.

Hanging lights are as varied in form as standards, and there are many simple chandeliers that can appear in rooms sufficiently high to permit their use. Old Dutch brass chandeliers, and carved early Georgian designs, gilded or silvered, are excellent, and they can often be obtained with four or six arms, requiring only a small drop. Crystal chandeliers are beautiful but costly ; however, there are many antique designs that can be copied quite easily and are infinitely preferable to modern electroliers in brass and copper.

Four Light Chandelier.

Six Light Chandelier.

A dressing table should have a hanging light and if possible an adjustable fitting that may be lowered if necessary. A suspended silk shade does away with the need of a special fitting, and although the silk-wrapped flexible wire of an electric lamp is not very unsightly, such pendant lights may be hung by a silk scarf or a cord and tassel, while lanterns and certain types of metal lights may have chains.

Lanterns with silk screens, and bowls hung by three or four cords, in carved wood, gilded or painted, or in glass, alabaster or coloured silk, can provide very attractive illumination. A semi-transparent bowl gives a more diffused light than one which throws its rays direct to the ceiling, where they are reflected downwards.

17th Century Lantern Clock.

Next: Lamp Shades.