Chandelier Installation & Repair in South Florida

An ordinary ceiling box is rated for fifty pounds at most, and many older ones for far less. Anything heavier needs a box and a support assembly rated for the actual weight.

Past that point the fixture usually hangs from a bar or a strap fastened directly to structure rather than from the box at all. The box then just contains the connections.

So the first thing we ask is what the fixture weighs. Manufacturers publish it, and if you send us the model number we can look it up before anybody climbs a ladder.

This is where most of our chandelier installation work happens, and it is the part homeowners should not attempt. A twenty-foot foyer needs a lift or scaffold, and a stairwell needs a lift that can stand on uneven ground.

Hanging height follows a simple rule. In a foyer, the bottom of the fixture should clear the floor by at least seven feet, and over a stairwell it should clear the highest tread by the same margin.

Sizing follows another. Add the room dimensions in feet and use that number in inches as a starting diameter. A fourteen by sixteen foot room suggests something around thirty inches across.

Above a table the rules change, because nobody walks under it. Thirty to thirty-four inches between the table surface and the bottom of the fixture is the usual range on an eight-foot ceiling.

Add roughly three inches of height for every additional foot of ceiling above eight feet.

Width should be around half to two thirds of the table width, and never wider than the table itself. A fixture that overhangs the edge gets hit by chair backs and by people standing up.

Most chandeliers now ship with LED lamps, or with candelabra sockets that people fill with LED bulbs. Either way, the old dimmer on the wall is usually the problem.

Dimmers built for incandescent loads need a minimum current that a set of LED candles never reaches. The result is flicker at the bottom of the range, buzzing, or lights that will not start at all.

We fit an LED-rated dimmer matched to the load and test it through the full range before we leave. On multi-lamp fixtures we also check that every lamp is the same make, because mixing brands in one fixture causes flicker on its own.

Antique and vintage chandeliers are worth keeping, and they usually need rewiring before they go up. Cloth-insulated conductor from the 1940s is brittle, and the sockets are often cracked porcelain.

We rewire fixtures on the bench, keeping the original body and finish. New conductor, new sockets, a new ground path where the design allows one.

Crystal fixtures need cleaning while they are down, and that is far easier at bench height than on a ladder. If yours is coming down for any reason, that is the moment.

A medallion covers the transition between fixture and ceiling, and on a plain drywall ceiling it makes a real difference. It also hides the patch when a new box lands somewhere the old one did not.

Canopy fit matters more than people expect. A canopy that does not sit flat leaves a shadow line, and on a fixture with any weight it eventually loosens.

We paint and patch around the box where the work required it. That is included rather than left for somebody else, because a perfect fixture over a rough patch looks unfinished.

Pendants and chandeliers over an outdoor dining area need a damp or wet rating depending on exposure. Under a solid roof with walls on two sides, damp-rated is usually enough. Open on all sides, it needs a wet rating.

Near the water, finish matters as much as rating. Brass and stainless survive. Painted steel does not.

Wind is the other factor people forget. A large open fixture on an exposed lanai swings, and swinging works fasteners loose over time. We use a rigid mount rather than a chain in those locations wherever the design allows.

Taking one down is genuinely the more dangerous half of the job. The fixture is heavy, it is above you, and it was installed by somebody whose work you have not seen.

We support the fixture before releasing anything, and we assume the box is inadequate until proven otherwise, because it very often is.

If you are keeping the old fixture, we crate or blanket it. If you are selling it, we can leave it wired and functional, which is worth noticeably more than one with the leads cut short.

A straight swap at standard ceiling height, box already rated, is inexpensive and takes about an hour.

Height drives the number after that. Anything requiring a lift costs more because of the equipment and the second person needed to operate safely.

Structural work drives it further. A new brace above a finished ceiling, a relocated box or a fixture over about seventy-five pounds all add time. We quote from photos and a model number, and the number we give holds unless we open the ceiling and find something nobody could have known about.

A chandelier with one dead lamp is a lamp or a socket. A chandelier where several lamps dim together is usually the dimmer or the driver.

Buzzing at low dim levels is almost always a compatibility problem between fixture and dimmer, and it is fixable in under an hour.

A fixture that has stopped entirely is often the switch rather than the fixture. We test the switch first, because it is the cheapest thing to replace and it is the culprit more often than the expensive thing hanging from the ceiling.

Send us the model number or a link to the fixture, a photo of the ceiling and the room, and the ceiling height. That is enough for a firm quote on the majority of jobs.

Have the fixture on site and unboxed before we arrive, and check the carton for damage when it lands. Crystal arms crack in transit more often than you would think, and finding that out at hour one saves a return visit.

For anything over twelve feet we schedule a lift, so those jobs need a little more notice than a standard swap.

Plenty of customers replace a ceiling fan with a decorative fixture, or the other way round. The box usually has to change either way.

A fan-rated box will hold a chandelier comfortably. The reverse is not true, because a light box has no rating for a moving load.

So if you are swapping a fixture for a fan later, mention it now. Fitting the right box once costs almost nothing extra while the ceiling is already open.