Carol, have you taken a white plastic bag and stuffed it to the size of the Possini Chandelier I posted, and hung it to see visually how it will look? It's 28" high. If your ceiling is 11', and you hang that chandy with approx 20" of chain, the light itself will be between 7 and 7.5 ft off the floor - a good height for an entry chandy. The fixture takes 6 60watt bulbs - more light than your old fan put out for sure. You definitely want to have a dimmer on this fixture. And I agree with BusyBee that sconces in this area will be definite overkill. I'd save the sconce budget for places that you'll want other lighting. If you're still undecided you can have the electrician run the wiring and bury it in the wall where you would like sconces, and not put a hole in the drywall. If you find later that you still want the sconces you can add them without any more trouble than opening up the hole in the drywall and accessing wiring.

Okay, I went out to the house today. It was rainy and overcast, but it was still hard for me to tell whether these will put out enough light for you. We have 2 recessed lights behind them (like in the pic) and 2 in front of them. We just used the decorative "old-fashioned" bulbs which came with the lights which, I think, are 60 watt. I think you can use 100 watt, but I'm thinking that would just increase glare, not help with task. I turned them on and looked for lighting reflection in the granite, but couldn't see much. I would have tried higher voltage bulbs for you, but, alas, there were none in the house. I'll be honest: I select items based on shape. I can look at a page of 100 lamps at the same time and immediately pick the one or two whose shape I like. That's how I picked these pendants. Task wasn't as important to me as much as size (had to be large since I had selected 2 rather than 3 pendants and the ceiling had volume), shape, and not cluttering the visual space. The choice of pendants and chandelier were the hardest for me, so I understand your dilemma. Good luck. I don't think I helped much.

oh I'm just dizzy. So much beauty! I stopped over here hoping for this exact thread. I am currently shopping and struggling for a chandelier for our "formal" dining room/space. It is meant to be the formal dining, but it is litterally eight feet from the front door. There is no real foyer. It also has a 15 ceiling and only a wall and a half seperating it from everything else. The fixture in there is very wrong and light just seems to disapear. Everything is so expensive out there, its very frustrating. Thanks Sumnerfan for starting this thread. It helps so much to be able to see the rooms with the fixtures instead of a store full of fixtures.

All this talk of decay and decadence brings me back to this project, which is to humanize a living space that's proportioned, except for the average sized kitchen, along palatial lines, while leaving the open concept open. It's interesting that with all this marketing of the raw, this former industrial space is pretty polished. The concrete is clean and smooth (not really anything like Palimpsest's favorite Brutalism), the metals (trusses, stairs, catwalks, ducts, window frames) are smooth and painted an appealing white with a green cast, and are in great shape and don't need to be redone. These may be industrial relics, but very civilizedly so. The decadent part is the size of the space, especially for one person who is barely beyond being a "girl". Most urbanites would be comfy (well...cramped but content) in something the size of the mezzanine. Without the upper bits, it's basically a two bedroom, two bathroom, open concept apartment with a dining area, living area and kitchen. On steroids. Big time. :) The owner is confused by our discussion, as I've relayed some of the more interesting bits, but it's helped us focus on how to make the living room functional for more than cocktail parties. She doesn't want to divide the space, which would suck all the grandeur out of it, and she doesn't want conversation groups. Palimpsest's digital living gave me an idea which I thought was silly, but might be a go, for a central tower for media, rather than putting it against a wall. This must have been done before--it doesn't feel particularly original--but I think it would work. We talked about making it out of wood and hiding all the blackness of the equipment, but it would be awfully big and block the view. More honest and practical would be to have a central service column with all the cables and juice, and put lots of screens on swing arms, as well as media players and the like. Perhaps have smaller screens facing into the catwalks. It would sort of be an inside out control console crossed with the monolith from 2001. Or it could, I suppose, be made of of brass steam fittings and go all steampunk. :) Becky, I totally forgot about that place!! Thanks for linking it. I think its the Navajos who don't tear down old structures but let the earth reclaim them naturally. Seeing it done on a castle scale is offputting, however, to put it mildly. I used to know someone who had owned and lived in a castle--the real ancient fortress kind--for many years. It really sounds dreadfully uncomfortable, and one imagines that they do best as amusements for tourists.