How to choose the best lights for your kitchen.
How to choose the right lights for your kitchen
We absolutely love seeing our bespoke lights installed in our customers’ gorgeously designed kitchens. But we know how hard it can be to choose the right lights for your kitchen to match your interior design visions. How do you choose the right colour? The right light design? Pendant, chandelier, lamp? There are endless questions.
We have put this small how-to guide together that will (hopefully) help you choose the most ideal lights for your particular kitchen setup.
Step 01 - Break up your kitchen into sections
By breaking up your kitchen into sections, you can start to understand how you will use each part of your kitchen, and what type of lighting will fit best.
Your kitchen might be big, it might be small. For some, the kitchen is a social hub that sees lots of friends, drinks and takeaways. For others, the kitchen is a cooking paradise.
See our simple layout of a kitchen with large island and worktop space.
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Functional areas:
These are areas that you will typically use for prepping food, cooking, or generally working from. Functional kitchen areas should always be lit well with a bright light that covers a wide area, typically using ceiling lights or wall lamps/fittings. We often see our Spark & Bell brass or fabric cable pendents used over worktops in high ceiling kitchens.
White space:
White space refers to the areas of a kitchen that is mostly un-populated by furniture. Blank wall space is a key example of this. These are areas that don't require ‘functional light’. Here you can get creative with beautiful wall lamps and ceiling lights. We most often see our black and brass ‘Aureole’ series wall lights used in these areas.
Serving and social spaces:
For serving and social spaces we are talking about worktops, kitchen islands and dining tables. We absolutely love the timeless trend of using low hanging pendants over kitchen islands and dining tables, and our reeded glass pendants and brass chandeliers work perfectly for this classic style.
The key trick to lighting serving and social spaces is understanding that they are multifunctional. By using lower hanging pendants in clusters of 3 or chandeliers, you allow for a large spread of light without substituting style. Combining dimmable switches with our Spark & Bell lights gives flexibility between moody romantic dinners and bright functional kitchen islands.
Step 02 - Choosing the ‘type’ of light based on kitchen function
Choosing the right type of light based on your kitchen function is really important and very often overlooked. This is where breaking up your kitchen into sections makes the job easier. Start with the centrepiece of your kitchen and work outwards when choosing a type of light. By ‘type’ we are talking about the overall style, not the design.
Example 1 - Over your kitchen island, you will want to decide on the type of light you want, this might be a ceiling chandelier, a low handing chandelier, a group of glass pendants or a single large pendant.
Example 2 - Over your kitchen counters, depending on your ceiling hight and top cabinet space, you will want to either decide on pendants or wall lamps/lights as well as whether you prefer to have a shade or an open style light. (At Spark & Bell we actually love using Tala Opal bulbs for open style wall lights to perfectly disperse soft light without a shade).
During this step it is good practice to think about how much light you want in each space.
We have included some snapshots below from our product spec sheets to help you picture and plan your space.
Step 03 - Choosing the light design, colours
Now comes the step we all love. Choosing the perfect light that’s just right for your kitchen! To help you out with styling and ideas we have put together some kitchen lighting inspiration from our lovely customers on Instagram.
The great bit about this final step is that you have done all the hard work already. You know exactly what you ‘need’ and what will work in your space; that means you can shop for all kinds of wonderful designs, styles and colours.
As you probably already know, we hand-make a wide range of beautiful lights in many styles. We love brass, art deco and modern looks, but also feature some beautiful traditional lighting. You can browse everything on our shop here.
Glass kitchen pendants:
As we have already seen, glass kitchen pendants give a large amount of light to a complete kitchen space. Kitchen pendants can be combined with islands or dining tables for a low hanging pendant effect, creating a great kitchen centrepiece aesthetic. Perfect for the more social-based kitchens.
Our most popular pendant at Spark & Bell is the Reeded Glass Pendant. Featuring a customisable coloured fabric cable as well as multiple metal finishes (our favourite is definitely the brass).
Massive thanks to @florenceandhenri for sending us images of your beautiful natural feeling kitchen design!
Kitchen and island chandeliers
Kitchen chandeliers are increasingly popular. Our customers love using our three and five arm brass chandeliers above kitchen islands to create bright and modern kitchen interiors. Brass and metal finishes on lights are incredibly versatile with interior design, and compliment many colour schemes and materials.
Kitchen chandeliers are often used above dining tables as centrepieces, and often help tie modern style kitchens with more traditional wooden furniture in dining rooms.
Our Brass chandeliers come with beautiful opal globes that disperse lights evenly across large rooms. These tie together perfectly with our previously mentioned Tala Opal bulbs featured on our wall lamps.
We love the how @florenceandhenri has used muted whites, browns and brass to really tie this space together.
Our kitchen Lighting recommendations?
Our favourite product recommendation for kitchen chandeliers often comes down to either our Alexis Four Arm Brass Chandelier or our T-Bar Brass Pendant. These two lights feature some of the best parts of our larger chandeliers in smaller unique designs.
The shape of our ‘Alexis’ chandelier is designed so to fit most kitchen islands and dining tables.
Kitchen worktop pendants
Pendants are a great option for open plan kitchens and worktops. Depending on the style, many open bulb pendants allow for a bright workspace while really giving a personalised look to any kitchen.
Brass finishes in kitchens have always been a loved trend. As seen here with the stunning brass tap and our Brass pendant combination. Kitchen pendants are often used in high ceiling kitchens where overhead cabinets are not a feature; creating a very open bright space.
Many of our ceiling pendants feature customisable colour fabric cables to match or contrast colour schemes.
@firstsenseinteriors has created such a luxury kitchen feel using dark tone cabinets with white and brass contrasts.
Kitchen wall fittings
Kitchen wall fittings are a great alternative to pendants if you don't have much overhead space available. Combining two to or three wall lamps or lights together over a kitchen worktop can create a very warm and focused area.
A great feature we love about our wall lamps is the ability to tie together colour schemes. Typically using shades or large sconces, our wall lamps can be styled in all kinds of materials. Our large collections of bespoke wall lamps feature everything from brass sconces, beautifully powder coated shades and even wooden elements.
@thisoldtownhouse has smashed it with the dark cabinets and white walls with brass wall lights. This kitchen really shows how easy it is to modernise and style up a space with lamp styles as well as marbled worktops.
We really hope this how-to blog post has helped you on your dream kitchen journey!
Ultimately, we know that everyone has their own styles and we look forward to seeing your kitchens in the future. If you do purchase any of our hand-made lights for your interior design, make sure you tag us on Instagram @sparkandbell . We love to share the amazing spaces our customers create.
