How to Choose The Right Chandelier Style and Shape

Home decorating is a tricky business. There are many words for an endless number of combinations and styles, and at the end of the day, the important thing is to be happy with what you’ve designed for your space.

One example of this phenomena is the modern chandelier. To the average observer, a chandelier is simply a hanging light fixture, related to its modern cousin the pendant light. However, a chandelier has multiple branches, or many layers, that hold more bulbs than a pendant lamp. The chandelier has a rich history and many design styles to choose from to help you fit the right one into your home.

Why Choose the Chandelier?

Chandeliers have a look and style all their own. They provide class and elegance in design, while providing an overall ambient lighting experience. Modern chandeliers aren’t limited to any one material, offering your choice in metals, finishes, or textures. Choose the classic look of crystal glass waterfall chandeliers with their multiple tiers, or you can find a sturdy metal globe style with rustic antlers for a farmhouse chandelier that fits something more eclectic.

Ceiling lighting fixtures can become a bold statement in the room, drawing attention and adding flair. As a result, chandeliers are more decorative and artistic than your standard hanging lamp or pendant lamp, and they take on many different shapes that can be scaled to fit different sized rooms. The ceiling is a blank canvas compared to the furnishings and other grounded pieces that clutter up the floor and walls of a room, so the modern chandelier is an artful way to utilize the landscape.

Chandelier Styles

The chandelier may have been around as a room element for centuries, but not every chandelier will look dated and out of place in a modern home. All of your favorite interior design styles can be complemented by the right chandelier. It is ultimately a matter of the shape and the colors and materials that are used. There are many chandelier design styles, but there are a few classics that you need to know about when considering purchasing a chandelier. 

The Contemporary Chandelier

Contemporary chandeliers are more understated and practical. You will find a contemporary chandelier in cool, timeless colors and simple designs.

The Farmhouse Style

Farmhouse style chandeliers often bring in wood finishes, aged and antiqued features, and other natural elements, even including the unique rustic look of animal horns or antlers. Farmhouse chandeliers may incorporate eclectic, dated items, such as barrel bands or wagon wheels.

Formal Chandelier Styles

Elegant, formal chandeliers are those look like the grand crystal chandeliers you would find in a ballroom, dining hall, or theater. These chandeliers are often multi-layered with glass or crystal embellishments to catch the light and draw the eye.

Industrial Chandeliers

Industrial chandeliers will use metal finishes and shine, as well as incorporate reclaimed materials to match the functional aesthetic of urban interior design. The light fixtures may be obvious and unexpected, such as repurposed and bulky stage lights or smaller exposed bulbs, or they may be entirely hidden in what would otherwise appear to be a hanging art piece.

The Modern Styles

Modern chandeliers incorporate clean lines and basic finishes that allow them to blend in with the contrasting palette of modern and mid century modern designs. They are found in variety of shapes, incorporating circles, squares, or straight bars or tubes, but the common emphasis will be the definition of the lines.

The Traditional Chandelier

Traditional chandeliers provide the classic chandelier silhouette of tall, narrow, decorative down rod central posts that lead out to elegant curved arches in support of an up-shaded light fixture. The light shades themselves are often curved and frosted glass, and the bulbs are often candle-shaped to match. They can be found in every color and finish, though the more common traditional chandelier would be shining gold or darker brass or black finish. Newer incarnations of the style may trend toward brighter colors and the chandelier may be painted any matte color imaginable, from white to blue or purple.

Chandelier Shapes

Chandeliers have come a long way in design since they were used to hang candles in the 15th century. You can still find modern interpretations of that classic design, but there’s no need to limit yourself when you have so many options to choose from.

Abstract Chandeliers

With emphasis on the art form, abstract chandeliers can take any shape, from swirling cascades to cubic lines that bear a striking resemblance to a molecule pattern, to stacked boxes with candlestick-bulbs.

Billiard Chandeliers

Billiard chandeliers are usually found over a long table, bar, or pool table, hence the name. Another recognizable trait is a tendency toward stained glass shades or individual colored down shades for very directed lighting immediately below the lamps.

Candle Chandeliers

The light bulbs in candle chandeliers are shaped to resemble actual candles in a classic hanging base. The candle chandelier is normally a very simple, linear design so that the attention is drawn to the candle-shaped light fixtures rather than the hanging frame that supports them. 

Drum Chandeliers

The base of drum chandeliers is round and shorter in height than it is wide in diameter, so it looks like a drum. The sides are most often formed by the shade, whether created by shaped material over a frame, or flat panels of other material, and always in a drum or barrel shape surrounding the chandelier. These can be used for mid century modern designs or more rustic, farmhouse styles, often depending on the material of the chandelier shade.

Empire Chandeliers

Ornate empire chandeliers have a traditional look, with their pear-shaped silhouette and detailed strings of draped glass or crystal designed to reflect light around the chandelier. The fragile draped pieces will be centered from the lower edge of the chandelier or from arches and branches arranged to emphasize them.

Globe Chandeliers

Exactly as the name implies, globe chandeliers are marked by either the fixture itself or the shade that encloses it being a sphere shape. Similar to the globe chandelier is the more modern Sputnik design, which has a centrally round shape and extruding arms or branches that form a starburst style.

Lantern Chandeliers

The boxy shape of lantern chandeliers usually give emphasis to their metal framework. The open lantern lines leave the light bulbs exposed to resemble stylized lanterns from yesteryear. These chandeliers can be found in a variety of metallic finishes to add embellishment to the room’s existing color schemes or go more neutral with a wood frame.

Linear Chandeliers

Like the billiard chandeliers, linear chandeliers are usually found over a rectangular fixture, such as an island or a bar, so they are shaped long and narrow. You can find a linear chandelier with the familiar stained-glass shade, the more modern exposed lines of clear shades, or even no shade at all over a simple rectangular base.

Waterfall Chandeliers

The popular style of waterfall chandeliers has a tiered effect, with a wide base at the top that tapers down level by level. The waterfall look is usually achieved by strings of dangling crystals or glass bead work to resemble water, but it can also be achieved through other textures, depending on the imagination of the design. 

The list of chandelier style types goes on and every option adds to the creative personalization options you have when choosing a chandelier for your home.

Lighting Limitations

While the chandelier is a focal point for any lighting scheme, it is not necessarily the most ideal primary light source within one. Most are designed to be dimmable, to provide custom ambiance. Dimmer switches are also useful in that they can prolong the life of the bulbs.

The form of the chandelier itself can provide reflective surfaces to refract light from that central bulb, such as with a crystal waterfall chandelier. It can also cast shadows instead if the chandelier has strong framework lines, such as with an antler or other abstract chandelier where the bulbs are located inside the outward branches. For this reason, they are not generally good sources for direct, task lighting, and should be augmented with other light sources in most rooms.

While chandeliers can be utilized alongside a complete lighting package, such as wall sconces or recessed can lighting, they are most useful at adding to the overall atmosphere outside of a particular zone. Modern chandeliers are for accenting the overall look of the room, and it’s important to keep that in mind when planning how to use them for lighting. Be sure they don’t end up pulling away from the enjoyment of the space rather than adding to it.

What’s Trending?

Thanks to the internet, you can read up on all of the existing kinds of styles and the different home trends they blend with. The most popular styles of the moment happen to also be the most versatile looks.

From interior designers to at-home do-it-yourselfers, remodelers are creating unique aesthetics with Sputnik chandeliers alongside modern and mid century modern home decor. Other trending styles bring in the timeless presence of lantern and waterfall chandeliers as an always-new look to the most familiar spaces.

A homeowner becomes their own expert by creating their space with all of these influences in mind and customized to their own rooms. The trends of the moment reflect that, so use your imagination. The ultimate goal of a chandelier is to help you create a personalized, unique space in your home.

Chandeliers have a long history throughout many cultures and the modern interpretations of them have brought the variety forward. Bringing in the look of a chandelier is a way of crafting and reflecting your own personal style. Be bold. Treat your ceiling as a blank canvas and let your chandelier choices color your home.