Modern lighting, more than any other element, makes or breaks a room’s ambience. In the dining room, especially, ill-chosen lighting can turn a beautifully presented, meticulously cooked meal into something to be gotten through, rather than savored and lingered over. Luckily contemporary lighting options for the dining room are more plentiful than ever, presenting designs both ravishing and innovative. The five modern lighting fixtures featured here are our picks for dining room lighting designs guaranteed to inject exactly the right kind of drama into those dinnertime gatherings.
Taraxacum Pendant Light by FLOS
Achille Castiglioni’s brilliant Taraxacum pendant light for FLOS would be an attention-getter anywhere, its flowery form (Taraxacum is the scientific word for dandelion) and bubbly beauty impossible to ignore. Castiglioni himself called his innovative design—20 aluminum equilateral triangles, outfitted with electrical sockets to hold 60 transparent incandescent light bulb—as a “big chandelier,” and that, it is. One that pays big dividends, suspended above a dining table.
FLOS Taraxacum Pendant Light >
Link Suspension Lamp by LZF
PH Artichoke Pendant Lamp by Louis Poulsen
A modern lighting design so familiar, it’s hard to believe the Louis Poulsen PH Artichoke Pendant Lamp was designed more than half a century ago—and easy to forget how innovative Poul Henningsen’s gorgeous 1958 design truly is. Henningsen spent much of his life investigating the nuances of light, and the Artichoke illustrates his endeavors in dazzling fashion. Its 72 precisely arranged metal leaves form an iconic shape that produces soulful, glare-free illumination under which any dinner guest will be happy to linger long past dessert.
Louis Poulsen Artichoke PH Pendant Lamp >
Etch Pendant Lights by Tom Dixon
Modernica Saucer Lamp