Hanging a plug-in pendant light

In older houses like ours, lights aren’t always where you need them. Lately we’d been noticing the lack of a light over our dining table (which also serves as homework table, jigsaw puzzle table, and so on). We could install wiring for a light, but that would be a complicated project, so we opted to add a plug-in pendant light that works with an existing outlet. It was a simple update that made a big difference.

Most of the work was in the decision-making. We considered hanging two, or even three, lights over the table, but decided we’d rather have one larger one. In the end we settled on a 16-inch round fixture for our 5 x 8 foot table.

Picking out an affordable pendant in a style we liked was more challenging than we imagined. A popular trend these days is the clear glass light fixture, with no frosting or diffusion. Let’s be blunt: this is a bad trend. Nobody wants to look straight at a light bulb! So we ruled those out.

We focused on “drum” style pendants that are roughly cylindrical. The HomeConcept light we picked has a fabric shade and also a diffuser on the bottom, which makes it more comfortable if you’re sitting under it.

Having found our pendant, we now had to think more carefully about the location. We’d want the light centered, but centered on what? Our table has to be a little bit off-center from our window to fit in its space. So should we center on the table or the window?

My lighting designer friend explained that in old houses, nothing is ever lined up. So you just have to make a choice. He suggested centering on the table as the most practical solution. We might be bothered for a few days that the light was off-center from the window, but after that we’d probably stop noticing. So we took his advice and centered the pendant on the table.

Hanging the light itself was pretty straightforward. It came with two different kind of hangers, white “bishop” hooks and metal hooks. We thought the bishop hooks were a little nicer, so we drove a drywall anchor where we wanted the pendant to hang, then screwed in the hook. Now we could hang the pendant and get it situated correctly.

The height of the pendant is mostly a matter of preference, but here again my designer friend had a tip. He suggested that the light be high enough to let me see out the window behind it when I stood up. So that’s where we hung it, which worked out to about 37 inches from the top of the table to the bottom of the light. It’s pretty easy to move up or down if we want to adjust.

Next we hung a separate bishop hook at the edge of the ceiling, to hold the cord up in that location. You can pull the cord tight along the ceiling but we left a little slack. The cord then runs down the wall behind a curtain, which conveniently hides it, then over to an outlet in the corner of the room. Finally, our light was up!

Now it would be perfectly fine to turn the light on and off with the switch on the cord, but for us the switch is behind that curtain and not terribly convenient. So we installed these GE Cync smart bulbs and connected them to this Cync smart switch that communicates directly with the bulbs using WiFi. That way we could turn on the pendant when we walk in the room. (For more on smart bulbs, see my blog post here.)

Lighting is often an afterthought in our homes. But this is the kind of small improvement that we can appreciate every day, as we eat, work, and play at a table where we can actually see what we’re doing!