Small Pendant Lights: 5 Spots I'd Put One in My Apartment

Small pendant lights are the lighting fixture I've recommended most to friends in apartments over the past three years. Not because they're trendy, they're not, particularly. But because they solve a specific problem that appears constantly in New York apartments: rooms with one ceiling box, positioned in the center of the ceiling, doing inadequate work for the entire room.

The ceiling box isn't going anywhere (you can't move it without an electrician), but you can add small pendant lights throughout the apartment using swag kits, hooks that route the cord along the ceiling to an outlet, no hardwiring needed. The result is pendant lighting in positions that would otherwise require an electrician and permission from a landlord who might not give it.

I've installed small pendants in five spots in my current apartment. Each one solved a specific problem. Here's what each is, what it does, which fixture I used, and what I'd change if I were doing it again.

My kitchen has a peninsula, three and a half feet of counter that extends from the kitchen into the living area. It's where I prep food, eat breakfast, and leave my laptop when I'm working from home. The overhead kitchen light (a builder-grade flush mount) is a good six feet away and mostly lights the ceiling, not the counter.

I installed the Jorine pendant ($44.99) over the peninsula using a swag hook in the ceiling, with the cord draped diagonally to a wall hook and then down to an outlet. The Jorine has a simple open-wire cage and a small incandescent-style LED that hangs at 32 inches above the counter surface. The light it throws is warm and focused, exactly what prep work needs, and nothing like the flood of cool white from the ceiling fixture.

The Jorine is the most affordable option here and the one I'd recommend if you're new to pendant lighting and not sure you want to commit to a more expensive fixture for a test installation. At $44.99 it's low stakes, and if the placement or the style isn't right, you haven't spent much to find out.

The swag cord, white cloth cord draped along the ceiling, is visible but reads as intentional. If you use a coordinating cord color (the Jorine comes with a white cord that works against most white ceilings), it looks deliberate rather than hacked. I showed the installation to my friend who does interiors professionally. She said it looked like something she'd seen in a Brooklyn coffee shop. I took that as a compliment.

My living room has a corner by the window where I have a chair and a small side table, my reading spot. For the first year in this apartment I used a floor lamp. The floor lamp worked but took up floor space I didn't want to give up and created a cord situation that I tripped over at least once a month.

I replaced it with the Mia pendant ($99.95), swagged from a ceiling hook positioned about 18 inches in front of the chair, hanging at 52 inches from the floor. The Mia has a linen shade and a warm diffused glow, much softer than the direct light I was getting from the floor lamp, and it doesn't create the shadows the floor lamp did when I was holding a book.

At 52 inches of hang, the bottom of the shade is at about eye level when I'm standing, which is a little low but fine because I walk around the chair, not under the pendant. For a position with foot traffic directly beneath it, I'd hang at 65 inches minimum. For a nook where you only sit, 50–55 inches creates a cozy, lamplike feel.

The Mia is my recommendation for reading nook and bedside pendants. The linen shade handles any warm LED without hot spots, and the visual weight is light enough that it doesn't overwhelm a small corner. See the renter bedroom lighting post where I describe a very similar setup on the bed side.

My bathroom has the standard rental bathroom light: a fluorescent strip above the mirror that does what it's designed to do (illuminate a bathroom) while making everyone look like they're being interrogated. I couldn't replace the strip (it's hardwired) but I could add something.

I added the Kida pendant ($59.99) on one side of the mirror using a small hook in the wall, with the cord running down to the outlet on the counter. The Kida has a small clear globe and a visible filament LED at 2200K. Hung at 62 inches from the floor on the right side of the mirror, it adds a warm supplemental light that counteracts the fluorescent strip's coolness.

This is a "supplement the bad light" installation, not a "replace it" installation. The bathroom still has the fluorescent fixture. But with the Kida running simultaneously, the overall color temperature shifts warmer and the light from the side fills shadows that the overhead strip can't reach. On its own at low intensity, the Kida creates a genuinely pleasant bathroom light for non-task moments (morning routine, evening wind-down). In combination with the fluorescent at full, it's functional and warmer than before.

This is the installation I recommend to friends who can't change their builder-grade bathroom fixture but want better light. Add a warm pendant, run both simultaneously, adjust the balance. It's not a perfect solution but it costs $60 and 20 minutes and it works.

The entryway in my apartment is a narrow 4-foot-wide corridor between the front door and the living room. There's no ceiling box in it, no existing light source whatsoever. Before I added a pendant here, walking in after dark meant reaching into the darkness to flip the living room switch before I could see anything.

I added a Jorine pendant here too, same fixture as the kitchen, different position. Hung via swag from a hook in the ceiling, cord routed to an outlet inside the front closet. Hung at 72 inches from the floor (the entryway is too narrow to allow anything lower without constant head contact). At 72 inches the Jorine hangs just above my eye level, which creates a warm greeting light that's genuinely welcoming rather than blinding.

I put this Jorine on a smart plug. It comes on automatically at sunset every evening via Alexa. When I walk in the door, there is warm light already on. This is one of the small quality-of-life improvements that I notice every single day. See the entryway lighting hack post for the full treatment of this specific problem and a few other solutions I tested before landing on this one.

My desk is under a window. The best natural light position in the apartment during the day, terrible at night. I have a desk lamp, but its cord contributes to the cord tangle behind my desk that I try not to think about too closely. I added a Mia pendant over the desk using a ceiling hook, hung at 40 inches above the desk surface.

Forty inches is lower than standard pendant height, but over a desk where you're seated and looking down at the work surface, it's right. The pendant is out of my direct line of sight when I'm looking at my monitor and it illuminates the desk without creating glare on the screen. I use a 2700K LED in it rather than the 2200K I use in the reading nook, slightly cooler for task work, warmer enough to not feel harsh at night.

The effect was immediate: my desk setup went from "functional" to "something I want to sit at." The warm pendant light makes the corner feel like a workspace, not just a place where I put a computer. It's a small thing with a daily impact, which is exactly what I look for when I'm making apartment changes.

For more on the desk and kitchen counter lighting strategy: the kitchen counter lighting setup post covers pendant and under-cabinet options for kitchens, and the studio apartment zones post applies the same thinking to undivided spaces where creating light zones is the primary design challenge.

The Common Thread: What Makes Small Pendants Work

Looking at these five installations, a few principles come through:

Swag installation opens up the whole apartment. Not just locations with ceiling boxes, any point on the ceiling with a hook can have a pendant. The cord becomes visible but manageable, and the flexibility is enormous.

Warm bulbs are non-negotiable. All five of my pendants use 2200K or 2700K LEDs. At those temperatures, pendant light feels warm and comfortable. At 4000K or higher, small pendants can feel cold and clinical regardless of the shade. Use warm bulbs.

Hang lower than feels safe. Every time I've installed a pendant I've had to resist the instinct to raise it toward the ceiling where it "won't be in the way." Lower pendants light spaces better and look more intentional. The right height always feels slightly daring before you live with it for a week.

Smart plugs change everything. Three of my five pendants are on smart plugs. They come on automatically, they can be dimmed from my phone, and they can be grouped with other lights for evening scenes. At $14 a smart plug, this is the best upgrade you can add to any pendant installation.

The rental apartment is an exercise in making the most of constraints. You can't move the ceiling boxes, you can't change the light fixtures that came with the unit, and you need to be able to undo everything when you leave. Small pendant lights via swag installation navigate all three constraints while genuinely transforming the quality of light in the apartment. Five installations, total cost under $400, total move-out patch under three ceiling holes. That's the whole equation.

See also: the small apartment lighting layers post for the full framework of how these pendants fit into a complete lighting strategy. The pendants are one layer. The others matter too.