A design style that celebrates history, heritage and craftsmanship

Industrial pendant lighting evokes an urban vibe and offers a rugged charm with warehouse and factory elements thrown in the mix. Pendant lighting rises to the lighting design challenge created by the increasingly popular open plan homes, high ceiling spaces, and large kitchens. Pendant lights hang gracefully from the ceiling to warm up dark spaces, create an inviting sensibility, and enhance a layered lighting scheme. A pendant light can either be a commanding focal point of a space or seamlessly blend with the architecture of a room, depending on the style of the light fixture. Celebrating history, heritage and craftsmanship, industrial style pendant light fixtures deliver raw beauty and edgy appeal to embrace industrial-inspired interiors.

The industrial influences

Industrial style lighting has a humble beginning—it originated from the raw, urban, warehouse world. While the focus on function rather than aesthetic created the utilitarian spirit, today industrial style lighting has evolved to walk the fine line between form and function, sophistication and utility. The industrial style embraces the enduring appeal of rugged masculinity, exposed construction and natural timeworn materiality. Angular lines, neutral colors, rustic finishes, simple shapes, moody hues, and sturdy details combine to create the statement-making throwbacks of industrial style light fixtures. Understated and elegant, pendant lighting that incorporates an industrial edge can infuse your home decor with a sophisticated yet unfinished charisma. Industrial pendant lights work wonders to create an intriguing look that features a mix between softness and roughness, contains both nostalgic and modern elements, and is memorable yet enduringly stylish.

Where are they used

Their rugged and raw appeal has sparked the rising popularity of industrial pendant lighting in modern designs for both home and commercial use. Suspended above living room seating areas, dining room tables, kitchen islands and bar tops, industrial pendant lights exude a sense of vintage chic while providing warm and inviting illumination. These iconic fixtures have become a staple design element in loft offices, restaurants, studios, retail spaces of historic districts, remodeled buildings or other reimagined spaces. Industrial pendant light fixtures are frequently used to deliver ambient lighting which provides enough light for safe navigation and basic visual recognition. Pendant fixtures that use a solid shade to control light distribution and emit a downwardly focused beam of light are a common source of task lighting.

Design concept

Industrial pendants take on a vast variety of shapes and forms to interpret classic designs with a modern approach. The open frame design is one of the mainstream trends in industrial pendant lighting. Open frame industrial pendants are available in geometries of cages, carriages and lanterns. These designs are characterized by clean and simple lines and exude a visual strength from their sturdy compositions.

Perhaps the most well-known type of industrial pendants is the barn light which features a classic metal shade that directs all the light downward. These farmhouse-inspired pendants carry a distinctly American-made aesthetic that can be incorporated into more modern design schemes with ease despite their reliance on vintage designs. Open frame fixtures and industrial pendants with a solid shade are commonly finished in bronze, black, nickel, brass or silver for the purpose of amping up their industrial vibe.

Aside from metal cages and farmhouse-style metal shades, the retro glass trend is also gaining traction. The combination of glass shades and exposed filament bulbs creates stunning visual effects and evokes a timeless industrial charm.

LED filament bulbs

While contemporary fixtures deliver design expression through sleek silhouettes and sculptural forms without necessarily drawing attention to the light source, industrial pendants have been taking advantage of the classic ambiance and decorative appeal of exposed light bulbs to generate their timeless appearance and industrial styling. The advent of LED filament bulbs gives new life to industrial pendant lighting of which the design appeal is rooted in traditional tungsten filament bulbs.

An LED filament bulb replicates the vintage look and beautiful ambience of incandescent filament bulbs while providing significant energy savings over a much longer serve life. It differentiates from other types of LED bulbs with the use of LED filaments which are linear LED packages made from a large array of small LED chips. The LED filaments can be arranged into tidy columns for maximum industrial style or they can be twisted for a more decorative appearance. LED filament bulbs can be configured into a wide selection of shapes and sizes, which provides great flexibility to match varied design and scale requirements of industrial pendant light fixtures.

Integrated LED systems

Although the lamp-based design reigns when it comes to industrial pendant lighting, the performance, light quality and lifespan of LED products that are engineered in the form of light bulbs are often compromised due to the cost and space limits. Integrated design is the trend for industrial pendant lights that do not have aesthetical reliance on exposed lamps. The fusion of fixture design with optical, thermal, and electrical engineering of LED systems allows to create the most optimal operating environment for long life, high color stability, and flicker-free operation of LEDs.

Integrated design opens up a new realm of possibilities for more compact or sculptural designs as well as unlocks the full suite of smart lighting features such as human centric lighting and voice activated lighting.