Lantern Chandeliers: How to Use Them Best in Your Cabin

Chandeliers are the centerpiece of many large rooms, entryways and dining rooms all over the world, and many people just love the idea of a majestic chandelier hanging overhead the dinner table. 

Lantern Chandeliers: How to Use Them Best in Your Cabin

In the old days, people would hang candles, torches, and even lanterns so that the place would have light from the ceiling. A lot better than a torch on the wall, or a candle on the table – that is why chandeliers have been a symbol of sophistication and good interior design since medieval times.

Nowadays, they come in many shapes and sizes, and despite not changing in appearance much throughout history, today we use them with smart LED bulbs. A lot safer than candles. 

It’s still an intelligent choice for lighting a large room, a mezzanine, or a cabin with a single large space. The more rustic chandeliers, like the lantern chandeliers, look particularly good inside of cabins, and most times it can be the perfect lighting set. You can’t go wrong with a lantern chandelier if what you want is a rustic look for your space. 

If you are thinking about getting a rustic lantern chandelier, let’s talk about how to choose one and implement one in your space.

1. Choosing the right sized diameter

So, if you plan on having a chandelier hanging over the main area of your cabin, or the living room, (or anywhere else, really), you should know how to choose the correct size for the lantern chandelier. There is a little trick to just calculate it without much fuss: add up the width of the room with the length of the room, it should give you a number for the chandelier’s diameter.

• So, Room Width + Room Length = Chandelier Diameter best suited for the space.

But there is a catch. This trick works if you are using the imperial system, and not metric. That is because this is a good rule of thumb, not actual rocket science. You use feet for the room measurements, and inches for the chandelier.

You engineers and mathematicians out there should relax, this rule is simply here to help you find a minimum size. This works 99.9% of the time, so you can have an idea of what you’re going to need. Let see an example on how to use it:

• The room has a width of 22 feet, and a length of 18 feet. The result is 40, which then you just use in inches. For this example, a 40” chandelier will work perfectly.

If you are using only a specific space in your room, then use those measures instead of the entire room, and it should work the same. For example, let’s say you want a chandelier over a seating area in the living room: measure the seating area and apply the formula.

2. Choosing the right chandelier height

But wait, there’s more: what about the height of the chandelier? That’s important to know, as you will be hanging the chandelier, not just fixing it to the ceiling. We’re talking about the actual chandelier, and not how high it should be from the floor. More on that later.

Here we will use more rule-of-thumb math, and it should be even easier this time. So, the formula is: room height (in feet) multiplied by 3 or 2.5 (we explain why later). Yes, that’s it. So, if your room has an 8 foot ceiling, your chandelier should have at least 24 inches in height. Or 20 inches, depending on your findings on our next topic: the best chandelier position.

3. Placing it in the right position

So, why 2.5 or 3? Well, because depending on how high your chandelier is (the actual measurement), you should know how high your chandelier should be (from the floor). After that you can start working on how to use the lantern chandelier to have the best possible results, both as a decoration and as lighting.

First thing to consider is how high you need the chandelier to be, keep in mind that it should, at the bare minimum, be 6 feet 6 inches (about 2 meters for the metric people out there) above the floor. That is so no one bumps their head.

So, if your place is 8 feet high, you can’t go for a chandelier that is larger than 24 inches in height. People will bump their heads. That is why in some cases the best thing is to use 2.5 instead of 3. But it should work regardless.

If your space is really high, you can work on how high the chandelier hangs by the amount of light you want in the room. If it’s a dining room, having the chandelier closer to the table is very nice, as the lights will be stronger and it will look good.

For a living room, or for the seating space example, the lantern chandelier can go a little higher so that the place can feel more intimate. It’s up to you. But always above 6’6”, just to be safe.