There were several things I didn’t like about the chandelier in our dining room. First of all, it looked old. Don’t get me wrong, I love cool old stuff. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have bought the house we did. Some of the rooms have really cool vintage light fixtures. This just isn’t one of them.
Secondly, it felt too small and lightweight for the size of the room. There are lots of formulas for how big a chandelier should be, but even without doing the math, it was apparent that the original wasn’t substantial enough. For the record, most of the formulas recommend a 26 to 28-inch diameter light for our size dining space. The original was 22 inches wide.
Thirdly, once the walls were dark blue, it wasn’t bright enough. It has five 40-watt bulbs that put out a total of 1,750 lumens. (One lumen is equal to one candle in light output. I don’t have a clear grasp of how to imagine that, but at least it gives us a number for comparing one bulb and/or lamp to another.) That’s not bad, but just looking at the photo above you can see the walls soak up that light. The new chandelier has fifteen 4.5-watt LED bulbs that put out a total of 6,000 lumens. At full brightness, it is like staring into the sun. Fortunately, the bulbs are dimmable so we can bring it down to a reasonable level, but if we need to simulate being caught in the spotlight of a prison break, we can.
By the way, I have ordered a plaster ceiling medallion for the dining room. It should ship in about three weeks. Once that is installed, I’ll be able to permanently mount the chandelier and add the additional arms and crystals. Keep an eye out for that post. I’m looking forward to seeing if it works in the room the way I expect.