Farmhouse Kitchen // What We Decided to Do Above the Island (+ A Pendant Light Roundup!)
THE FARMHOUSE
It’s been over a month since we last talked about our Farmhouse kitchen remodel! Crazy how time flies (especially when you’re also working on a laundry room 🤪). Today I wanted to catch you up on what we’ve decided to do above the kitchen island in terms of lighting. Plus, for all those who asked, I put together a budget-friendly roundup of pendant lighting at the end of this post!
Remember this fixture?! We bought 2 of them from Rejuvenation about 3 years ago when we were working on the Porch House kitchen renovation. We installed them in that space and then removed them when we realized the project was over budget (we replaced them with inexpensive IKEA fixtures). The Hood lights came to our Farmhouse office, where they looked nice, but I always knew they would look best in a kitchen.
If you’re not quite keeping up, here’s the journey these pendants have made…
Porch House kitchen > Farmhouse office > Farmhouse kitchen
Our kitchen originally had a fan over the island and we debated about keeping it (I mean keeping a fan, not that fan). We kind of liked the country feel of a fan. But we didn’t use it super often and of course pendants offered more light, which is never a bad thing in a kitchen. So then I spent a couple months trying to convince Garrett and he finally FINALLY agreed. psst: we shared more about our lighting plans on Instagram yesterday in case you’re interested.
all kitchen sources here
By the way, no one misses the fan 😉
Before we get to that roundup of budget-friendly pendants, let’s talk about a few things to consider when picking out pendants.
Things to consider
Metal finish
I like to stick with 1 or 2 metal finishes on lighting in a room. For this kitchen/laundry-room/pantry, we’re using only ‘old brass’ lights, and that should help tie the spaces together. It also feels right for a house with lots of original brass doorknobs and such.
opacity
No one, and I mean NO ONE, likes to stare directly at a light bulb while eating (or doing anything else, really). So depending how your pendants are positioned, you may want to consider an opaque fixture.
quality/longevity
It’s always great to say ‘buy quality and you’ll be buying for life’, but sometimes that’s not in the budget. I get it. That was our issue at the Porch House with these pendants in the first place. So if you can’t afford quality lighting, I definitely recommend finding inexpensive ones that look timeless so they’ll hopefully last awhile! And of course watch out for sales…Rejuvenation lighting goes on sale for at least 20% off a few times a year. Check out the roundup below for more lighting suggestions!
How to hang them
Studio McGee created a great guide for hanging pendants. So I highly recommend you check that out, but I’d also encourage you to set up a ladder and have a friend hold the light up for you so you can see them in your own space. You may want to hang them a bit higher than recommended if you have big windows or a TV you don’t want to block or say, rowdy children that like to throw balls inside (hypothetically 😉). So double check that the location and height works for your room before the lights get permanently installed.
Round up
If our $400+ Rejuvenation Hood pendants are out of your budget (like so many readers mentioned on our reader survey!), I rounded up some budget-friendly options. There are SO many great fixtures in here and I think they would all look lovely in a classic/simple/modern kitchen like the one we’re building.
