A Beautiful Light, From Where You Sit

In the 1920s the Danish designer Poul Henningsen set out to tame the glare of the bare electric bulb. His layered shades, still made today, were designed to hide the light source from direct view, directing and softening its light while preserving its warmth.

Most lights are chosen standing up, in a showroom, from a photograph or from the doorway of the room they will hang in. Most are lived with sitting down, at the table, on the sofa or in a chair with a book. From those positions we see a fitting from angles its photographs rarely show. Choosing a light well means considering the observer as carefully as the object.

The room seen from a chair

At the dining table the view is upward and close. From a low sofa it is long and shallow, with the light hanging nearer the line of sight. From a staircase landing the fitting is seen from above, which reveals whatever the shade or bowl conceals from below.

Before choosing, it helps to sit where you will sit and picture the fitting overhead. Which seats look up into it? Will the bulbs show beneath the rim of a shade, or between the arms? Is anyone looking down into it from a landing or a gallery?

The answers differ from one chair to the next, and from one guest to another. As we grow older, changes within the eye tend to increase sensitivity to glare, so a bright point that one person barely notices may trouble someone else at the same table.

Sparkle and comfort

None of this is an argument against exposed lamps or brilliant crystal. In 1952 the American lighting designer Richard Kelly identified the 'play of brilliants' as one of three fundamental elements of good lighting, and likened it to an eighteenth-century ballroom of crystal chandeliers and candle flames. A room without some sparkle can feel flat, however well it is lit.

Whether sparkle delights or tires the eye depends largely on scale and position. Cut crystal breaks light into many small, shifting points scattered across the fitting. A single bright source gathers its light in one place, and the closer it sits to the line of sight, the harder it is to ignore.

The surroundings matter too. A fitting that seems gentle by day can feel far brighter on a winter evening, once the walls and ceiling around it have fallen into shadow. Above a table where people linger, glinting crystal can be much of the pleasure. A bare lamp in a seated guest's view is seldom welcome. The most accomplished designs understand the difference between sparkle that invites the eye to linger and glare that makes it turn away.

What the glass or shade actually does

Glass that looks equally beautiful with the lights off can behave very differently once they are on. Clear glass shows the lamp within it, and will sparkle or dazzle accordingly. Opal glass, milky and translucent, diffuses the light across its surface, replacing the concentrated brightness of a visible lamp with a softly glowing form. How gentle that glow appears still depends on the strength of the lamp inside and the size of the glass around it. Coloured and textured glass tint and scatter the light in ways particular to each design.

The same choice can sit within a single design. The Classic Chandelier in Light Brass and Crystal is offered both with and without shades, so the same twelve arms and Asfour crystal give either the lively glitter of open lamps or a quieter effect with the bulbs screened from view. The mid-century Sputnik-style chandelier gathers twenty-nine lights within opaline glass spheres made to diffuse them. More contemporary still, Filippo Mambretti's Mikado pendant can be ordered with a glass diffuser over each light or without, making the character of its light part of the specification.

A photograph shows how a fitting looks when lit. It cannot show how comfortable it will be to sit beneath, or how evenly it will light the room. Where those qualities matter, the specification deserves as much attention as the image.

One beautiful light need not do every job

A chandelier is often expected to light a whole room on its own, for every occasion. Asked to do that, it must be bright, and that brightness sits exactly where the seated guest looks.

The chandelier can instead be chosen for presence and atmosphere, with other lights given the practical work. Over dinner it might glow at a low level while wall lights bring warmth to the edges of the room. For reading, a lamp beside the chair serves far better than any fitting overhead. A pair of branched wall lights with opaline glass diffusers, hung either side of a bed or on a sitting room wall, brings light nearer eye level and leaves the chandelier free to set the mood.

Think, too, of how the room should feel at different moments: animated at dinner, quieter in conversation, focused when someone settles down to read. Where the fitting, its lamps and the dimmer switch are compatible, a single chandelier can move between those moods.

Questions worth asking before you buy

A few questions reveal more about a fitting than any first impression. Can its bulbs be seen from a seated position, or from above on a stair? Is there an image of it lit, and from what angle was it taken? Which light source does it specify, and how bright is that source? Is the glass clear, opal, coloured or textured, and what does that mean for this particular design? Is it meant to light the whole room, or chiefly to give it character? Can it be dimmed, and with which lamps?

The answers vary from one model to the next, and our team can help find them for the piece you have in mind. The light worth choosing delights from the doorway and still gives pleasure from the chair, evening after evening.

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