What size chandelier or pendant

Sizing a hanging fixture is one of the few lighting questions with published, repeatable answers. There are three, and the one you use depends on what the fixture is over.

Over a table: half to two thirds the width of the table. Schoolhouse and Lamps Plus both publish it in those words; Capitol Lighting adds a shortcut - roughly 12 inches narrower than the table.

In a room, with nothing under it: add the room's length and width in feet, and use that number in inches. Schoolhouse's own example is a 12 by 10 foot room: 22 feet, so a 22 inch fixture.

Over an island: divide the island length by four for two pendants and by three for three, per Visual Comfort - which gives you the count and the spacing in one step.

All three are rules of thumb. Schoolhouse says as much on its own page. They exist because they land in the right neighborhood almost every time, and because the failure modes at either extreme - a tiny fixture over a big table, a vast one in a small room - are so obvious.

Over a table, the published window is 30 to 36 inches from the tabletop to the bottom of the fixture. Schoolhouse gives that figure for standard 8-foot ceilings, and Capitol Lighting gives the same.

Lamps Plus publishes 28 to 34 inches instead. The two-inch difference sounds trivial and is not, because the bottom of the window is where a fixture starts blocking the face of the person across the table.

For taller ceilings, Capitol Lighting publishes the adjustment: three inches higher for every additional foot of ceiling above eight feet. On a 10-foot ceiling that puts the fixture 36 to 42 inches above the table.

Over an island, Visual Comfort's window is the same 30 to 36 inches above the counter - which, because a counter is higher than a table, puts the fixture noticeably higher in the room.

A chandelier is a fixture full of small sockets, and the bulbs decide how it actually looks. Three practical cases:

Exposed bulbs, visible from the table. Go warm and low-output per bulb, because six bright bulbs at eye level is glare. A 2200K vintage LED reads as candlelight and is meant to be looked at.

Shaded or frosted arms. Prioritize color rendering, because the light is landing on food and faces - a CRI 90 candelabra bulb is the upgrade that shows.

A single pendant over an island. One standard socket, so a good A19 does the job and you choose brightness by lumens rather than by fixture.

Whatever the fixture, put it on a dimmer if you can. A dining fixture at full output is a work light; at a third it is the reason the room feels good.

Buying too small. This is the error in nearly every case, because fixtures look bigger in a shop than they do on a ceiling. If you are between two sizes, take the larger.

Hanging it too high. A fixture pushed up toward the ceiling stops being a dining light and becomes a room light. The 30 to 36 inch window exists because that is where the pool of light lands on the table rather than on the floor.

Centering on the room instead of the table. The fixture belongs over the table, even if that is not the middle of the room. A chandelier centered on a room and offset from the table looks like a mistake nobody can unsee.

Forgetting the slope. On a vaulted ceiling a standard canopy will hang crooked - the fixes are in the best sloped ceiling light fixtures.