22 June 2018

A Huge Selection of Chandeliers for Sale Ensures Something for Everyone

Lighting, just like colour, has the potential to completely transform a room. Whether it is a kitchen, a master bedroom, a TV lounge, or just a corner of some room that now serves as a home office, the choice of a suitable light fitting and where one may choose to locate it can provide the homeowner with a very effective means to create the perfect ambience within a given space. Once, chandeliers would only be found for sale in one or two of the country’s more upmarket stores and, in addition to being prohibitively expensive, they were of a design more suited to the halls of some English stately home than to the lounge of a simplex in a Johannesburg suburb. By contrast, not only are today’s models far more affordable, but the range of available designs is almost unlimited.

The classic design for these ornate creations, in which crystal prisms were used to refract the light from a battery of candles in order to distribute their illumination over a wider area, first appeared during the 15^th century. At that time, chandeliers were not offered for sale to the masses and, rather than suspending their often bulky and complex branched structures from a ceiling, they were mounted on stands. Each structure was individually designed and made to order by specialised craftsmen, either for a member of the nobility or for one of the wealthier merchants of the time who could afford such luxuries.

By the 19^th century, gas was beginning to replace candles as the source of light, and while some of the older units were converted to burn gas, others were purpose-built and became aptly known as gasoliers. When, in the 1890s, it was the turn of gas to be replaced by electricity, ready-made chandeliers for sale became a common sight, although the proposed alternative name of electroliers failed to catch on. Interestingly, some were designed purely to act as a decorative focal point and lacked any source of illumination.

Today, their decorative nature is still widely appreciated, and their designs now extend far beyond that of the traditional inverted, multi-tiered wedding cake. Modern designs embrace curves, swirls, and other geometric shapes, both symmetric and asymmetric, as well as employing new materials in a wide range of colours that enable them to blend or contrast with existing décor.

While many of the modern breed of chandeliers for sale still utilise incandescent, tungsten filament globes, often in the shape of the candles from which their name derives, the trend is towards more energy-efficient, compact fluorescent light bulbs or light-emitting diodes, while some traditional designs utilise mirrors rather than costly crystal prisms.