The best plug-in pendant lights

A swag pendant hangs from a hook rather than an electrical box, and its cord runs across the ceiling to the wall and down to an outlet. That single change moves the problem from electrical work - which needs permission and often a qualified person - to a fixing and a cord, both of which are yours to solve.

As with sconces, most plug-in pendants publish no output figure because they take a standard bulb. So the picks here are the bulbs, and this is the checklist for the fixture.

Cord length is the specification that catches people out. The path is not the drop - it is the drop, plus the horizontal run to the wall, plus the drop to the outlet. Measure that whole path with a tape before ordering.

Everything else about a swag pendant is easy. The hook holds a weight in straight tension from a ceiling, and getting it wrong is the one genuinely unsafe outcome in this whole category.

1. Into a joist, if you can find one. Strongest by a wide margin. A small hook into solid timber will hold far more than any pendant weighs.
2. A rated toggle or spring anchor, if you cannot. Read the rating and buy for several times the fixture weight. Plasterboard alone holds almost nothing in tension.
3. Not adhesive. Ceiling adhesive hooks are rated for straight downward load on a vertical surface, which is not what a ceiling is. This is the one place on the site where we would not use adhesive at all.

The resulting hole is small, and filling and touching it up at the end of a tenancy takes five minutes. That is a make-good question, not an electrical alteration - the difference is set out in the lease rules page.

Over a dining table, 30 to 36 inches above the tabletop. In a corner as an accent, lower is usually better - a pendant hanging at head height in the middle of a room is a hazard, and one hanging just above a side table reads as intentional.

For a dining table specifically, the bulb matters more than the fixture: this is where people and food are looked at, so a high-CRI bulb at 2700K makes a disproportionate difference. An open-bottomed shade with a bare high-CRI bulb in it beats an enclosed shade with a cheap bulb every time.

The cord across the ceiling is the aesthetic cost, and it is manageable - matched to the ceiling color and run in a straight line rather than a diagonal, it disappears surprisingly well. The full method is in how to hide a plug-in fixture cord.