Astral Pendant Lights

I found these pendant lights in the Vivaterra catalog. The metal globe shade has small punctures in it to create a star burst effect - very cool. These would be great as accent lighting or over a dining table. The price is great too - $149 or $189 depending on the size you choose.

I'm not sure how they define "green", but Vivaterra has some really nice housewares and accessories - it's worth a look if you want something unique.

Pendant Lights, Omer Arbel & Cool Canadian Lighting

I've been looking for pendant lights to hang over the bar area of my kitchen. At first I was thinking of doing something like the Cypree large pendant by LBL Lighting (shown at left). I was inspired by a project we did at Bohl Architects that was featured in Annapolis Home Magazine. You can see the pendant lights they chose hanging over the kitchen table on the last page of the article. The entire house is very cool and worth a look - you can see more photos here.











I also love the Capri 1 pendant by Jonathan Adler shown below.








But then I saw the 23.2 House designed by architect Omer Arbel (below) featured in Dwell Magazine. The house has a lot of innovative features (you can see more photos by clicking the link above), but I really loved the clusters of pendant lights grouped throughout the rooms.

Arbel designed these 28 Series pendant lights for his own Vancouver based company, Bocci Lighting. They are elegantly simple and eclectic all at the same time, but a little out of my price range at $460 apiece ($495 for the LED version - which I would definitely recommend if you are going to spring for these).

He has a very cool smaller pendant also, the 14 Series pendant (shown at left), but it's still $320.















Anyway, after much web searching for a similar fixture I did manage to find an alternative - the Crescent Pendant by Alico Lighting (shown below) - another Canadian company. It has some of the same qualities that I love about Arbel's fixture - an undulating round outer glass shade with an inner opal shade that shields the light bulb - and the best thing is that it's $236. I'm not positively sold yet - I need 5 pendants - so I'll be doing some more searching in the next few days.

Ideas - Pendant Lights

These pendant lights cost about $7 each from Ikea. They actually came with a plug on the end of the wire, and were meant to be plugged-in and hung from a hook. I bought white ceiling escutcheons from Home Depot, and our electrician wired the lights directly to the electrical box.

Ikea always has a large variety of inexpensive light fixtures, and a lot of times they can be modified or combined to create something unique. Check out Ikea Hackers for more inspiration.

This ceiling fixture also came from Ikea. It's almost identical to a much more expensive fixture I wanted to buy.