How To Measure For Pendant Lights Over A Kitchen Island

These are questions that I hear from my clients over and over. How do you measure for pendant lights over a Kitchen island? How many lights should I install, two or three? How high should they be off the counter top?

If you do a quick Google search, chances are you'll come across 100 different formulas that all seam like you need masters in mathematics to solve the equation. I am here to demystify these formulas and let you know it's a very simple solution (really)! You'll even get a little cheat sheet for your island size if you scroll all the way down to the bottom.

How do you measure for pendant lights over a Kitchen island?

When it comes to measuring for hanging pendant lights, what seams complicated is really very easy. Let's say you have an 8'-0" island. We want to start out with that measurement in inches so 96" long. Right away, we subtract 12" so that the size of the light will never surpass the edge of the island. Now we have a measurement of 84". Keep that number in mind.

Next, let's say we are looking at pendant lights that have a 14" diameter. You divide the subtracted measurement of your Kitchen island (in our example 84") by the diameter of the pendant light you would like to use (in our example 14"). So in our example, 84" divided by 14" comes out to 6. BUT WAIT there's one last step to figuring out how many lights you need. YOU DIVIDE THAT LAST NUMBER BY 2 to give everything some room and equal spacing so they're not all touching when you hang them. We would divide 6 by 2 and in our example, we would need three 14" diameter pendant lights to hang over an 8'-0" long island.

Step One: Island length in inches [minus] 12 inches = new island length

Step Two: New island length [divided by] diameter of pendant light

Step Three: [then divide again] by 2 = total number of lights needed

Here it is again written out using our example from above:

96 minus 12=84

84 divided by 14 = 6

6 divided by 2 = 3

Total number of 14" pendant lights needed over an 8'-0" island = 3

If all of this is still overwhelming, skip to the end to view my cheat sheet on the sizes!

How many lights should I install, two or three?

The number of lights that you should install over a Kitchen island is dependent on the diameter of the pendant light. When you use the formula above, you won't always end up with a nice, neat number. You should play around with the sizes to get them as close as possible to two or three (or more depending on the length of your island and the width of the lights) when you do your calculations. If you can't get close with the diameter you have selected, then it's time to re-select your light fixture. As far as aesthetically how the design looks, it's mainly a design preference how many lights you would like to use. Once you know 2 or 3, you could use the formula (or my cheat sheet below) to know how big your pendant light should be when shopping.

How high should they be off the counter top?

Here's another illusive question but this one is much easier to figure out! The most common rule of thumb is pendant lights should hang 30" to 36" above your Kitchen island. Extra tall ceilings should be taken into consideration and the lights can hang slightly higher at around 40" - 46" above your counter top.

Size of Kitchen pendant lights for a 7 foot, 8 foot and 9 foot island.

If you were too lazy to do the math or it was too confusing, here's my cheat sheet for the "ideal" width of your Kitchen pendant lighting:

7 Foot Island

(2) Lights: 18" diameter

(3) Lights: 12" diameter

8 Foot Island

(2) Lights: 20" diameter

(3) Lights: 14" diameter

9 Foot Island

(2) Lights: 22" diameter

(3) Lights: 16" diameter

Hope all of that helped and best of luck with your Kitchen project!

xoxo Regina