I was asking recently about a hood and small pendants (older thread). My solution involves the symmetry of two small pendants working with the hood. I like high-hats for their unobtrusive lighting, but my personal taste is to have something decorative providing some light and some style at the same time. I say yes, do a pendant. It's hard to visualize your space, but from the description I'm thinking a long bar light over the peninsula, and the hood over the island.

dueceluxe I'm not sure if you ever got an answer to your question, but I'm going to chime in because in 2008 I was in the same boat. We have a 48" BlueStar in a 12' island, with a prep sink located about 48" away, which is where I spend my prep time. Frankly I wish people would focus on answering the direct questions, vs. lecturing about what percentage of prep/cook/cleanup time people "should" be spending in their kitchens, or in which direction they should be facing when doing so. The OP stated they were looking for an island hood for their cooktop, not IF they should be putting the cooktop in the island. For us personally, my prepping and cooking is very intertwined, and we entertain a lot. Ergo, I want to be facing my guests while prepping AND cooking, and not facing my guests during cleanup (THAT sink is behind the prep area against a wall), so the cooktop in the island is what we did and we (and guests) LOVE it and wouldn't go back. It's not for everyone, but it's definitely right for me. Having said all that, yeah, sadly the hood is going to be expensive. We went with a Best by Broan IEX222 51" with a 1500 CFM externally mounted blower. The pros are that the thing will suck up ANYTHING at full speed. The con is that we've had it for 7 years, and unfortunately have gone through 4 control modules or transformers on the thing (everything on it stops working). So nn my frustration I'm now researching replacement hoods, which is going to be $$. It's the price you pay for the style you want. Currently evaluating Cavaliere and Imperial 54" hoods....

Lynn wrote: "I can't find any information online about this idea ... I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of it." Assuming Houzz/Garden Web counts as "on-line," then your search missed a key source. You will find here that this subject has been exhaustively addressed, both with respect to down-draft vents and ceiling "hoods." tl;dr: Cooking effluent rises as a plume starting at pan diameter (larger with gas) that expands as it rises. The hotter it is the greater its momentum. Hotter, higher momentum plumes cannot be effectively u-turned to flow downward to a vent. Only the lowest temperature cooking can be deflected in this way. As for collecting the rising effluent at the ceiling, plume expansion and effects of cross drafts cause the ceiling vent to have to be very large and have high CFM ventilation requirements, along with high CFM make-up air requirements. Perform your search with the "site:" tag pointing to here.

The kitchen designer we were working with didn't sound very confident that there would be anything in the appropriate size, without buying something stock and having it customized to account for proper clearance above the range. Essentially the math just doesn't work - middle of the range is about 78" - 36" (height of range) - useable stove top space (I'd like 30", maybe could deal with 26" although code is 18") Leaves us at most 18" of range hood space. Unfortunately most of the range hoods in our price range (ie. less than the new range itself) need a minimum of 24" I'm not 100% against a downdraft vent, but I'm also not really for it either, I forsee the lift motor breaking, it's a slide in range, so where does the blower motor go? And they seem to be priced over $1200. If I had that kind of coin, I would have reconfigured the whole space, paid the 5 grand to have a load bearing wall and exterior door removed, and put the range smack dab in the middle of my fantasy island ;) The other option of course, is to put in an undercabinet without the cabinet - I dunno, build a fancy box for it to sit in? I just don't know how that would work in a kitchen without any uppers. I'm suffering from design fatigue. Here's an overview of the design, as you can see options are limited for placement - and the cabinets are already built so, there's no changing now. I was just hoping someone out there knew of a manufacturer that designed something for weird little 100 year old houses that had kitchens in converted porches :)