Most people arrive at bedroom pendant lights from one of two directions. Either the bedside tables have run out of room and the lamps have to go somewhere else, or the single fitting in the middle of the ceiling is glaring straight down at the bed and something has to replace it. They are different problems, and they want different fittings.
Hanging a small pendant on each side of the bed is the most useful thing you can do with a suspended fitting in a bedroom. It clears the nightstand of everything except a book and a glass of water, it removes the cable that gets caught behind the table, and in a small room it is often the only way to get light to both sides of the bed at all. Narrow shades work best — anything much over 25 cm starts to crowd the space above the table.
Buy them as a pair or at least with matching canopies. Two different fittings either side of a bed is a look that reads as an accident rather than a decision.
Measure from the top of the mattress, not from the floor — bed heights vary far too much for a floor measurement to mean anything. The bottom of the shade wants to sit roughly 30 to 45 cm above the mattress, which works out at something like 75 cm to 1.10 m off the floor depending on the bed. Set it back 15 to 30 cm from the edge of the mattress rather than centring it over the pillow, so the light falls on the page and not on the person next to you.
Lower than that and you knock your head sitting up. Higher and it stops being a reading light and becomes a small, badly aimed ceiling light. For actual reading, 200 to 400 lumens per person is plenty, and a shade that is closed at the top keeps that light where it belongs.
A central bedroom pendant has one problem no other room shares: you spend time lying on your back looking directly up into it. Anything with an exposed bulb, a clear glass shade or an open cage is uncomfortable from that angle, however good it looks from the door. Opal glass, a fabric drum, a solid lower diffuser or a shade deep enough to hide the source all solve it.
Height is the other half. Nobody walks under the middle of a bed, so a central pendant over the bed can hang lower than one in a doorway or a walkway — but it should still clear anyone standing beside the bed to make it or change the sheets, which in practice means keeping the bottom of the shade around 2.0 m.
2700 K is the sensible ceiling for a bedroom and 2200 K reads calmer late in the evening. Nothing above 3000 K belongs near a bed. Dimming matters more here than anywhere else in the house, because the same fitting has to serve getting dressed in the morning and reading for twenty minutes before sleep. What dims depends on the fitting: with E27, E14 and G9 sockets it is the bulb that has to be dimmable, with an integrated LED it is the luminaire.
Whatever you choose, work out how it will be switched off from the bed. An inline switch on the flex is the simplest answer for a bedside pendant, and a pair of them means each side of the bed controls its own light.
Almost nobody has ceiling outlets sitting neatly above each nightstand, and this is what stops most people going ahead. There are two ways round it. A ceiling hook and a longer flex pull the pendant sideways from the existing central outlet — that works for one light, less elegantly for two. Or use plug-in pendants with a cable and an inline switch, which need no electrical work at all and are the standard answer in rented flats. Rod-suspended fittings cannot be swagged across a room, so if the outlet is in the wrong place, choose cable or chain.
30 to 45 cm above the top of the mattress, offset 15 to 30 cm from the mattress edge rather than centred over the pillow.
Yes, and it looks good, but choose a shade that hides the bulb from below — you will be looking straight up into it — and keep the bottom around 2.0 m so it clears anyone making the bed.
2700 K or warmer. Anything above 3000 K reads as office light once the sun is down.
Not for a plug-in pendant on a flex with an inline switch. For a new ceiling outfeed above each bedside table, yes.
