How high are your ceilings? If you're doing lights where people are standing, you'd want the bottom of them to be at least 7' from the floor. If you have 8' ceilings, that leaves only 12" for the fixture, which is not a lot of room for a pendant. Flush mounts might be a better option if that's the case. I have no problem with two, I think it depends on what you choose, how big it is, and how much "punch" it has. We're putting two drum shades in our LR, one seemed silly, plus wasn't in a good spot for seating, and needed to be HUGE to look at the right scale, and three was just too many. That room is 18.5' long.

Thanks everyone! Yes, I think I am leaning towards a school house pendant like the one I linked above. Mocking it up is probably the way to go. I am also a little weird about having things hang over my head in my workspace--switching to a wall mount pot rack for this reason. So the mock up would give me an idea whether pendants would bother me. (I swear I'm not quite this strange in person.). Definitely keeping flush mounts as another possibility.

My ceilings are just under 8' and I have a tall husband worried about bumping his head on pendants lol. Our island is 9' long but only 40" wide. We went with clear pendants so visually they weren't intrusive. Played around with how far off the island and found a height that worked for us (my husband). We originally tried the smaller 6" but in the end got the 10" version of these from PB: https://www.potterybarn.com/products/pb-textured-glass-pendant-hood/?catalogId=84&sku=3564536&cm_ven=PLA&cm_cat=Google&cm_pla=Lighting%20%3E%20Pendants&region_id=658780&cm_ite=3564536&gclid=Cj0KCQiA6t6ABhDMARIsAONIYyyT9EKIF7j5Z49P7maicy8XKMtK8CfyevVz58yNd1zpFvaXAbpyPc0aAjk3EALw_wcB

We are currently looking at this pendant light (will get 2). But I have know idea if you can adjust the length of the rod. It says it is 12" but comes with 18" adjustable rods. So does that mean it can only be hung at those two heights? Here is a mock up of where we would like to hang them height wise so not to block the window much. Each pendant is 60 watts and the size is 5.75" high x 6.75" wide. https://www.lowes.ca/product/pendant-lighting/galaxy-675-in-x-538-in-brushed-nickel-frosted-glass-bell-mini-pendant-light-330588050