Flush Fixture

A flush fixture is a fixture that fits inside about 12 / 13 inches. That means that from the ceiling to the bottom of the fixture is 12 - 15 inches. If you have 8' ceilings that is a great fixture for your house. In a house in MA there was a foyer with 9' ceilings and leaded glass in the side lights in the foyer. We had a flush fixture that the owner of the house liked and she decided it would work in her foyer. One of the reasons it worked well is because there is a staircase behind it that actually comes at a right angle to the foyer. It makes sense , coming down that staircase to not have a fixture that long. This flush fixture worked very well in that placement.  I didn't think the fixture would work but the Owner had an eye for it.

Art & Lighting

We have a client that has a lot of Art in her Georgian Colonial Home. Her ceilings are 8 1/2'. She didn't want to give up wall space because it would take up space for the Art. We had to figure out how to light the ceiling. After some discussion we settled on Inverted Domes. She didn't want to use track lighting and didn't want to have anything fight with the paintings. Inverted Domes are more Architectural so they would work best. The light is a soft light. When you have spots and you illuminate a painting it can feel like an Art Gallery. This is someone's house.

She also wanted the lights to be beautiful to make the light an integral part of the room, to have the light feel like Art. This house was a Georgian Colonial.

Height of Antique Chandelier Over Table

There are two rules I know of regarding the height and size of an Antique chandelier going over a Dining room table.
1) Don't hang the bottom of the Antique fixture less than 5 feet from the floor or 30 inches from the table top.
2) Don't exceed the width of the table with the diameter of the fixture.
The rest of it that is most of the time there is no rule to cover it.
  I usually say the height of the Antique over the table has to do with the ceiling height of that particular room. A room with a 9 foot ceiling will usually look good with a fixture hanging 5.5 feet from the bottom of the chandelier to the floor.
  A room with an 11.5 foot ceiling will look better with the chandelier hanging 6.5 feet from the bottom of the chandelier to the floor.
  It is somewhat related to your door and window frames that are more stretched out in the room with the 11.5 foot ceilings where your door frames are closer to 6 foot 8 inches when you have a nine foot ceiling.