Our house came with all recessed lights, even in the dining room. While I do love the convenience, I don't love the look of all recessed lights. We wanted something to define our dining room area, and break up the openness a little. I loved the look and price of these
Eden Pendant Lights from CB2. The only problem was I needed to figure out a way to convert a recessed(canned) light to a pendant without hiring an electrician. We experimented with a few ideas, one being just cutting the line our self and doing a hard wire (too risky, as we are not electricians), we also tried the
Can Converter which was the biggest flop in the world. We finally found a 15 dollar recessed to pendant converter from Lowes. This worked beautifully and only took five minutes to install. The
Can Converter took over an hour to install each, was overly complicated, with a bunch of parts. We also almost shorted a something and electrocuted ourselves. Plus the can converter is 50 dollars each, the same cost as the pendant light!
One negative about the Lowes pendant converter is that it only takes candelabra lights, which are lower wattage, so if you really need to brighten up a room this is not for you.
One other thing to note is that the Eden Pendant comes with its own wire, but it plugs into an electrical outlet, so you would see the wires. If you hire an electrician they can easily cut the wires and rewire for you. You would have to buy a medallion to cover the hole.
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| From recessed lights to drop pendants for around 65 dollars each. |
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| Converter from Lowes |
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| Easy to install, just screw into the light bulb fixture. |
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| Both lights installed |
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| Candelabra light bulb, its blue because its one of the full spectrum light bulbs. I did have to do some funky screwing in of the drum shade. |
