Drama at the Right Scale: Our Top 6 Lighting Picks for Our Guest Bed
We’re taking a step back from the demolition front with today’s post to chat more about design. We find we don’t talk enough about our design process on the blog and tend to focus on the physical transformations and the construction process. While those aspects of a renovation are important, we also want to share the background of how our design visions first materialize. We’re hoping this little bit of design background might inspire some of you all in your own designs too!
“Compared to our last house project, we decided to push ourselves a bit more this go around and create moments in this house that are much more special and highly unique. ”
One of our favorite ways to achieve this is with really great lighting. With that in mind, we’re sharing our top round-up of pendant options that we considered for our guest bedroom. We’ll dive into our selection criteria, cost, style, which one we ultimately picked, and give you a sneak peek as to how it all comes together.
Defining Your Criteria
Before we get into the product options (and where you can find them!), let’s give you a bit of background about this light’s future home and the many criteria it had to fulfill. When selecting a light fixture for a space, it’s important to zero in on a few key objectives to help you narrow in your search. The world of light is huge and if you don’t set some parameters, it can feel pretty overwhelming.
We had a handful of fairly specific aspirations for this light. The first and easiest place to start when defining your lighting criteria is overall size and shape. For us, we knew we wanted something round and somewhat sculptural in the 20-28” diameter range. Given the scale of the future skylight above, this felt like the right dimension that would still make a statement in the room but not overpower or block the view to the sky. We also had to think about how the scale would work with the other lighting in the space. We just ordered these 10” diameter pendants from Schoolhouse Electric for either side of the bed and had to make sure the ceiling fixture differed enough in scale and style so as not to compete.
Schoolhouse Electric Plug-in Pendant + Metal Dish Shade in Sergeant Green
Next up is materiality. As mentioned, this light fixture will be suspended below a new skylight we are having put in with our new roof. Our design concept is that the light fixture glows from the daylight above. We envisioned either a fabric or paper fixture that would appear luminous in an interesting way throughout the day. We also needed it to be lightweight and have a minimal canopy so that we could detail its hanging structure the way we wanted.
Lastly, it needed to work with the rest of the lighting we’ve already selected for the house. Most of the lighting we’ve purchased thus far for the other spaces is round with a white shade, has a subtle ribbing or texture, and hangs from a light colored cord.
Rounding Up The Contenders
With all these factors in mind, we rounded up our top 6 favorite fixtures that fit the bill. Each fixture was somewhere in the $300 - $700 range. Some are more expressive while others are a bit more minimal. We looked at a variety of material options too - from fabric, glass, and cardboard to wood veneer and a translucent plastic polymer. So enough with the chit chat. Let’s check out the options below! They’re also linked if you all want to do a bit of shopping. Do you all have a favorite? Which one do you think we picked? If you want to find out, scroll on down and see how we plan to bring it all together.
Bringing It All Together
Drumroll…. And we have a winner! We opted to go with the 25” diameter Nelson Saucer Bubble Pendant from Herman Miller. We were able to get a fantastic trade discount on the piece (shout out to our local American Office reps!) and expect it to arrive by the end of July. There’s a great little write up on the history of the piece over at Dwell if you want to check it out.
A few qualities that stood out to us was the skeleton frame that created this interesting vertical ribbed effect along with the overall lightness of the fixture. Beyond working well with the shape of the future vaulted ceiling, we also think it will have a nice, delicate glow not only from within but also from above given its translucent bubble form. This fixture definitely was the most classic of the bunch. Given that we plan to have a mix of antique and contemporary furniture in the space, this felt like the best option to blend all those styles together.
“Speaking of antiques, we were delighted to find out from Owen’s mother that his grandmother Orva used to have this same light fixture back in the 1950s when she lived in Ohio!”
Now that we’ve given you the full backstory as to how we settled on this light, you’ll have to come back for Part 2 of this post to see how we plan to suspend it below the skylight! Hint - it involves ordering lots of tiny bits and baubles from an online lighting supply shop. We can’t wait to share it with you! Since we’re so excited about it, we decided to go ahead and give you a little sneak peak of what’s to come with this concept rendering below.
In the meantime, we hope you all have enjoyed seeing behind the curtain on our design thought process. Let us know in the comments your favorite from the round-up. What do you all think? Did we make the right choice? Also, if you have any other lighting tips or sources we should know about, don’t hesitate to reach out via our contact page or let us know on insta. We’d love to hear from you!
And don’t forget when selecting lighting for your projects to set some criteria for yourself and think about how it works with the rest of the fixtures in your house. Also, don’t be afraid to add a unique ceiling feature or play with scale for a bit of added drama.
