Need More Light in the Kitchen? Here’s a Stylish, Adjustable Fix

HAVE YOU ever yearned to yank the ceiling light in your kitchen closer to the radishes you’re julienning? Cursed the shadow you cast between an overhead fixture and your cutting board? Adjustable pendants can get you out of your own way.  “At their highest, they provide ambient lighting,” said Sara Bird, a stylist and the co-author with Dan Duchars of the newly published “Retreats for the Soul” (Ryland Peters & Small). And at their lowest position, she says, they focus lighting and act as a task light. 

These functional fixtures and their counterweight mechanisms have been floating over tables for over half a century. Ms. Bird recalls how the industrial 1940s counterweight versions morphed into recoiling versions in the ’60s and ’70s, alternative designs that hid the working parts. This discreet concealing trick is still available on some models, but Los Angeles interior designer Martha Mulholland, for one, admires the visible, “industrial meets decorative” look of those with visible ballast. “It’s a design born out of a practical function,” said Ms. Mulholland.