‘I don’t even like chandeliers. They often look ropey unless they're in a stately home,’ said Nicky Haslam in his ‘dos and don’ts of decorating’ column. Indeed of all of the decorative elements you could add to your house, a chandelier may be the most divisive one – the Marmite of lighting, you might say. Considering the number of plastic-looking, rather kitsch iterations that populated the high street during the early 2000s, Nicky's rejection of them is understandable, but there are many designers out there who would disagree, maintaining that the right chandelier, in the right setting, can be a marvellous thing. Which leaves us asking: chandeliers: terrific or tacky?
For Nicky, there are certain rules to using a chandelier, and if you aren’t going to follow them, you may as well not bother having one at all (‘eye level lighting is much nicer and makes people look pretty,’ he maintains). Rule one, crystal ones do not belong in the countryside unless the house in question is a grand stately home: ‘it doesn’t look right. They’re too elaborate and “good”,’ he explains. The logic here is that when chandeliers first became popular in the 16th century, they were considered a thing of grandeur reserved for suitably resplendent settings. Although in their earliest medieval incarnations they were merely sticks of tallow (animal fat) nailed to the ends of intersecting wooden planks, the grandeur they later came to represent would be out of place alongside rain jackets and wellington boots often found in country cottages.
Rather than the classic crystal ones, Nicky favours small metal ones or lanterns, placed ‘above something in each corner of a room. This lights the room much more prettily and looks nicer if you have a lengthy room. It is an 18th-century German trick which I think looks wonderful,’ he says. As for blue, black or contemporary chandeliers, Nicky has just one opinion: ‘they are ghastly.’
Despite Nicky’s distaste for them, there is a huge and emphatic audience for chandeliers. Chloe Willis, Associate Director at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, is a particular fan. ‘They are amazing,’ she says. ‘I think people have it in their head that a chandelier only belongs in a very grand country house, and anywhere else it would look stuffy or too ostentatious. But I think that when they are used appropriately in the right setting they can be magical and marvellous – and can be contemporary or traditional, depending on the beast. In a contemporary setting the right chandelier can act like a sculpture.’
For interior designer Lucinda Sanford traditional ones are unrivalled in their elegance. ‘It is a matter of sourcing unusual ones that can be more subtle. If you are looking for special, old chandeliers Dimitri Stefanov is the place to go,’ she says. ‘If you are going for a lower budget, think about coloured glass which doesn’t need to have the same quality and reflection of light as clear glass,’ she advises.
Crystal, glass, metal or plaster, Chloe maintains that the trick to making any type of chandelier work is scale. ‘When I first arrived at one of the projects I am working on at the moment, every room was full of tiny crystal chandeliers. They were so small and so glittery and looked so silly in these vast rooms,’ recalls Chloe. When it comes to finding the right size one, Chloe’s mantra is ‘bigger is better’. ‘We always look at the diameter of light in relation to what it is sitting over – these should be similar. We also consider the scale of the room. Large rooms can take a chandelier whose diameter is at least 1 meter. If the ceiling is very tall, say 3.5 meters, even a 1 meter wide chandelier will disappear, so go larger still!’
Placement is also key: if you are following the Haslam way, then the corners are where they belong. But more important is that they should go above something. But not just anything and certainly not a dining table, he maintains. ‘I think they light dining tables in a nasty way unless you have a hidden spotlight that throws pools of light onto the table. Though I don't like them on during meals regardless of where they are – they are okay for ballrooms when you’re looking up but when you’re under them it’s an awful light.’
Like Nicky, Chloe agrees that there should be something underneath a chandelier, with the exception of when they hang through the middle of staircases. ‘In a drawing room over a coffee table they can be fantastic,’ she advises. How low they hang is also of the utmost importance: all too often pendant lights of any kind are hung too close to the ceiling and throw the whole room out of balance. ‘As a rule I hang pendant lights or chandeliers about 2 meters 10 inches away from the floor,’ says Chloe. ‘Any lower and you might risk someone banging their head, and if you have a ridiculously high ceiling you might take that up a bit.’
Then there is the matter of the type of bulb you use. Original chandeliers would have been illuminated by candlelight, and most designers tend to agree that mimicking this flickering, warm quality is the way to go. In all of his lights, Nicky prefers fake candles over modern bulbs, which ‘make a glowing light like a wick and flicker which is magic’, though if it is a bulb you want, try Girard Sudron for the finest candle-like creations, as Chloe suggests. These will help to create the same atmosphere that earned chandeliers their popularity in the first place. If the jury is still out, this certainly feels like the right place to start.
