Choosing Pendant Lights for My Kitchen

Because The World Needs More Pendant Posts

‘Twas a year ago (almost to the day) that I asked you if the world needed another post about choosing pendant lights. Not surprisingly at all, you told me that, Yes! It absolutely does!, so I’m finally getting around to it. My goal with this post is to let you know that’s it’s perfectly OK to have your heart set on a certain pendant light, but then to choose a different one. And then another different one. And then, another different one, after that other one.

In other words, it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind— as many times as she freaking wants to. (Sorry, men. You have to stick with your first choice. Changing your mind shows weakness. You also have to throw away the installation instructions. Hey, I don’t make the fake rules. You’ll have to take it up with corporate…)

Anyway… Behold! My Kitchen.

So, obviously, you know how the kitchen pendant light story ends, but it was a long road getting here. Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

This was my dream pendant in 2013, which I told you all about in this post.

I love mercury glass so much and this one stole my heart immediately. It truly was love at first sight. Back when I was designing my kitchen layout, I actually made mock ups of my dream pendants out of paper and hung them over an island that I built to scale using cardboard.

I’m not crazy. I’m a visionary.

Then, I Changed My Mind

When you’re designing a whole house at once, you have to be prepared to pivot. I chose those mercury glass pendants before I literally had anything else picked out, but as things in other areas of my crappy house progressed, those lights started to seem a bit… I don’t know… frou? I mean, the price is definitely frou (at more than five hundred bucks a piece!), but I’d have paid that if I felt they were “the ones”. Eventually, I realized they weren’t the ones and I broke up with them in favor of these…

If you remember, in this post, I had picked pretty, crackled glass tiles for my kitchen backsplash. The shape and color of these pendants matched those tiles perfectly.

Kismet, right?

Not so much.

I purchased three of them for my kitchen island, but these pendants didn’t work out for two major reasons:

1. They absolutely refused to hang straight.
2. The brown glass made everything look… well… brown.

I paid about $270 total for the three of them, which included shipping from China. Unfortunately, according to their return policy, I would have to pay to ship them back.

To China.

I figured I could sell them, locally, to someone else.

Someone who digs crooked lights…

Needless to say, they’ve been sitting in my garage for five years now.

I ended up choosing a different backsplash tile anyway, so this relationship turned out to be a big waste of time and money.

Then, I Changed My Mind Again.

Following that disaster, I moved on to these pendants.

I purchased three of them on eBay for cheap, but you can buy them here on Amazon for only $37 a piece, which includes free returns.

(You’ll see why that’s important in a moment.)

They say you never forget your first love pendant, and I guess I still had feelings for my mine because, as you might have noticed, the shape of these was very similar to the original ones I chose back in 2013. (But these cost 93% less!)

I had plans to do this DIY faux mercury glass treatment on them, but I never got around to it and then I noticed that one of the pendants had a chip on the rim, but, since I procrastinated for so long (and I bought them on eBay instead of Amazon) I couldn’t return them, so…

They’ve been sitting in my garage for four years now, next to pendant #2.

I Took a Break.

At this point, after three failed pendant relationships, I was finding it hard to commit to a new one. Rather than get involved with yet another fixture, I made do with these for a few years:

Yep. Just naked bulbs hanging on plain Jane cords. Nothing fancy. Just enough to get me through those dark, lonely kitchen nights. I guess I was just using them until the right pendants came along.

Finally, they did.

The Perfect Pendants

After all these years of searching, I knew what I was looking for. A fixture that was attractive, yet accessible. One that was smart with a (budget) friendly personality. One that I could meet in person, instead of seeing its most flattering pictures on an internet lighting website and then ordering it by mail from halfway around the world, only to be disappointed and then having to stash three more cardboard boxes in my garage along with the other rejects…

You guys know how this ends. I fell in love with this handsome light from The Home Depot.

And we lived happily ever after.

I’m going to spare myself the math, but all of these failed pendant purchases… well, they cost me a lot. Both financially and emotionally. I could try to sell them, but with the second set being all crooked and the third set having at least one chip, I’m going to cut my losses and just donate them all to charity. There’s no sense in holding on to past pendant relationships. Schmoopy is dying to reclaim that space in the garage, so it’ll be worth it just to get rid of them.

It’s time to move on.

But, before I go, check out these responsible bulbs I bought that totally take care of themselves. Know why? Because they’re independants!

I’m sorry? You’re welcome? I can’t decide. You pick.

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