It seems like another life ago when decorative lighting was the main light source in UK homes. At the basic end there would be a simple pendant, lantern or shallow bowl type ceiling fitting in the middle of every room, regardless of its proportions or what it was being used for. If the rooms were big enough, the ceilings were high enough, or you didn’t have to worry about walking underneath you might find a chandelier. If ceilings were too low for ceiling lights you might find wall lights but usually because nothing else would fit in. Sometimes you might even have found a table lamp or two that didn’t just live on a bedside table.
Then the trickle of ceiling down lights turned into a deluge and became the only lighting source of “choice”. They were seen in two straight rows like airstrip runway lights in ceilings in every room in housing estates throughout the country. Decorative lighting was abandoned almost wholesale apart from the odd chandelier over a dining table. Beauty and interest disappeared along with the variety created by different forms of illumination all in favour of pools of light merging into each other on the floor.
So, why not use ceiling down lights for what they were designed for and embrace decorative lighting again? Let’s bring back atmosphere and creativity to our homes and see our walls, ceilings, furnishings and other precious things instead of just our floors.
