No dining room is complete without a striking lighting accent suspended over the uncontested centerpiece of the room: your dining table. While chandeliers have historically been a feature of formal dining rooms, there are more styles, finishes, shapes, and sizes to choose from than ever before! We want to help you find the perfect dining room chandelier. 

Young House Love Cascade Capiz Chandelier

With such a wide range of dining room chandelier styles available for perfecting and personalizing this essential entertaining and event space, choosing the best chandelier for your dining room can feel like an impossible decision. Shades of Light has a wide variety of dining room light fixtures, from modern and farmhouse chandelier styles, to traditional and transitional styles, and even semi-flush mount designs for low ceilings. We want to help you find the perfect dining room chandelier. As you gather ideas and inspiration for your main dining room lighting fixture, use these tips to help you refine your choices!

How To Choose A Dining Room Chandelier

When considering which dining room chandelier ideas speak to your unique sense of style, imagine the aesthetic you want to evoke in your space. If your design goal is to create a more formal setting, traditional dining room chandeliers and crystal chandeliers radiate with classic, tried-and-true elegance. For homes with a rustic panache, our collection of farmhouse dining room chandeliers is sure to have the perfect light to evoke quaint, countryside charm. If you prefer more contemporary designs, search for our modern-style chandeliers for sleek, minimalist vibes. And, to truly customize your space, install your chandeliers on dimmer switches for ultimate dining comfort!

Faceted Glass Layered Chandelier

Chandelier Finish Styles

If you are looking for a metal chandelier for more casual or unique spaces, your choice of finish may have the greatest impact. Sleek and shiny chrome and polished nickel finishes will fit best in minimalist and modern dining rooms, as they impart a clean, sparkling aesthetic. Antique Bronze dining table chandeliers will blend seamlessly with more transitional or rustic décor, while rope and natural wood chandelier materials will tie together nautical or bohemian-themed looks. Trendy mixed finishes are an easy way to grasp the best of both worlds—they make it simple to mix and match future furniture or décor updates with existing lighting fixtures. Simple black chandeliers are versatile and can go with a wide variety of design styles.  

Minimalist Iron Ring Chandelier

How To Choose A Dining Room Chandelier Size

Once you've pinpointed the style and feel you want to craft for your space, determining what size chandelier fits your dining room will help you decide on the perfect fixture. Dining table chandeliers are statement pieces meant to tie a room together, so when in doubt, err on the larger side. However, a few simple rules can help you determine roughly what size chandelier will look best in your room. A light fixture that is too small can be overwhelmed by a bigger space, but an oversized light fixture in a small dining room will look cramped and mismatched. The simplest way to choose a lighting fixture that is perfect for you is to look at your dining table. As a general rule, the width of your chandelier should be roughly 12 inches less than the width of your table at its widest point.

Beaded Kona Tiered Chandelier

What chandelier shape compliments your dining table?

In coordinating your dining room table and chandelier, it's important to choose complementary shapes to accent your room. A round or even square dining room table might look best beneath a round dining room light fixture, while a rectangle chandelier is best reserved for long, rectangular tables. Large dining room chandeliers always make a grand statement and can lend a timeless elegance to a space when suspended over a long dining table. Conversely, if you want to use contrasting shapes in your fixture, suspending two or three small round chandeliers over your rectangle dining table instead of a single linear chandelier is a chic and inspired way to create texture in a room and flex your design skills.

Beach Bungalow Outdoor Pendant

How To Hang A Chandelier Over Dining Table

Once you've chosen a dining room chandelier that matches your taste, the final consideration is how to hang your dining room light fixture. Your chandelier should be centered over your dining table, even if the dining table is not centered within the room. Your chandelier should hang 30-to-36 inches above the table, assuming you have 8-foot ceilings—that's the measurement labeled 'C' in the graphic below! For taller ceilings, add 3 inches for every extra foot of ceiling height over 8 feet. There are more tips and tricks for how to hang your chandelier over your dining table, but these key rules are a great place to start!