The era of the big light is over. So said designers and design editors, who in the past couple of years had all shrugged their shoulders and admitted that despite their best efforts to install show-stopping chandeliers, no homeowner was ever turning them on. All we wanted was task lighting, little pools that felt intimate and warm, glowing from table lamps, floor lamps and sconces.
But – whisper it – the controversial design trend for having a big ceiling light is back, to a degree, at least. It's controversial because so many of us had declared it dead, buoyed by anecdotal evidence that pendants were, on the whole, left switched off, only illuminated for the moment you were looking for the TV remote, and plunged into semi-darkness the second it had been found.
