Custom Chandeliers

The Ultimate Guide of Custom Chandeliers

Nowadays, we celebrate the difference and unique personality in our interior design, this is the same reason why custom chandeliers are popular day by day.

A nice chandelier can be customized to explain your design idea, can reflect your taste and personality. If you run a hotel or restaurant, a well-designed chandelier can even add magic to your space and attract more clients. The custom chandelier is not just for illumination purpose, it can be an artwork for your space.

In this article, we will share with you our experiences on custom chandelier, this can be a completed guide showing how to can buy the suitable and qualified custom chandeliers from reliable suppliers, and to save money as well as avoiding headaches.

Chapter 1: Where you need a custom chandelier

The custom chandelier is suitable for all spaces that demand attention. The following places usually required outstanding custom chandeliers for design and business purposes.

Hotel project: custom chandelier is an essential part of the hotel interior design, especially for the star hotels. Just imagine how you feel when seeing an extra-large chandelier with luxury design when entering the hotel lobby, it gives you the first impression of this hotel. Also the unique design chandeliers in the corridor, ballroom, elevator lobby, and any other hotel locations, can affect your whole impression on this hotel staying.

Restaurant project: a delicate restaurant always has the careful design for its lighting. The custom chandeliers which matching your restaurant interior design can reflect your restaurant theme and culture, so to create a much better social and dining atmosphere.

High-end Villa project: a unique chandelier can match your villa space design both on its style and dimension. You can design it with any size, material, and color, so the chandelier can express your taste and tell your own story.

Other commercial spaces such as shopping malls, casinos, cafes, offices… the reason for choosing custom chandeliers are to match the interior decors, to show their unique design ideas and business philosophy, to impress their clients…

Chapter 2: What you need to consider before purchasing the custom chandelier?

Same like any standard chandelier for your room, when you need to purchase custom chandelier for your projects, you need to consider the style of interior design, so to decide the suitable chandelier style and the materials going to use, you need to note the space size, so to decide the appropriate chandelier size and its hanging height.

Some common and useful guideline are as here:

• Finishing like satin/polished nickel or chrome, or white, can be a good choice of modern style chandelier. And antique brass, shiny brass, or copper can be suitable choices for a traditional chandelier. While some finishing like black, bronze, champagne… can be widely used in any custom chandelier combining both modern and traditional design styles.
• Measure the length and width of the room in feet, add them together and convert to inches, that’s the perfect diameter/width for a chandelier. Take a room with 14 feet length and 10 feet wide for example, 24inches will be its suitable chandelier diameter.
• For each feet of ceiling height, you need to consider 2~3 inches of chandelier height, so for a 10 feet ceiling height, you can choose chandelier height as 20~30 inches.
• While if your chandelier installed above a table, make sure the chandelier diameter will be between 1/2 and 3/4 of the table width.
• Your chandelier needs to be installed no less than 30inches from table surface to chandelier bottom, and no less than 7 feet from the floor. If you have a high ceiling in your foyer or stairwell, you need to consider much more height for hanging the chandelier, so it can light up the whole area.

While comparing with standard chandelier you can find in any lighting shop, custom chandelier need to produce specially for a project, no stock, and some time have a much higher cost, and its dimension can be varied from 1 meter to dozens of meters. You have to consider the following very important factors before your custom chandelier purchasing.

The project schedule: most projects have a tight schedule on material delivery, while producing custom chandelier can take from 4 to 8 weeks or even more, you also need to consider the delivery time if importing from abroad. You need to have this schedule in mind so can meet the deadline for chandelier installation.

The budget: Not like any chandelier from bulk production, in most cases custom chandelier is more expensive due to its unique design, much less required quantity, special required materials, and much more labor cost involved. When planning for the custom chandeliers, you should figure out your budget on them, some times you need to balance between your design and budget. In general, the overall design, the material, and product structure, these things affect the cost a lot.

The installation condition: for small size chandelier you can install it easily in all type of ceiling, without worrying much about the weight and support structure… etc, while in many cases, a custom chandelier can be huge, it’s not rare that a hotel lobby chandelier can be with 3 meters diameter and over 2000KG weight, some extra large chandelier can be over 10 meters length or height, in this case, you need to consider its installation condition seriously: the type of ceiling, its maximum weight loading, what is the supporting structure in the ceiling, the gross weight of chandelier, project location such as if located in sea area, high humidity or not, windy or not inside the space….

Chapter 3: Customize the hotel lobby chandeliers

Hotel lobbies play an essential role in all places where custom chandeliers required. Just recall the largest custom chandelier that you ever see, most probably it was a hotel lobby chandelier. In most cases, especially for the luxury hotel, its hotel lobby chandelier need to be customized with its stunning design and large or even huge dimension, so to be impressive.

When designing a chandelier for your hotel lobby, bedsides the general rules mentioned in chapter 2, there is something more you need to consider:

The first thing will be always the safety of supporting structure. Some hotel lobby can be as large as 1500~2000 square meters, with height over 15 meters. To customize a stunning chandelier for such a big area, the first important thing needs to study well with the architects to decide the maximum building weight load, then to decide the maximum weight of required chandelier, and how to make the supporting structure on the ceiling.

How the chandelier design can wow the clients and improve hotel staying experience. This is the target of a luxury hotel lobby chandelier, nowadays this function seems more important than its illumination purpose. The designer uses the custom lobby chandelier to express hotel brand culture and business philosophy, with its shinning unique design and matching entire lobby interior style, so to build more connection with their clients and make them feel relaxed during the stay.

Dimmable function for better lighting atmosphere and energy-saving purpose. Now the most common dimmable type in hotel projects are DALI and 0~10V dimming, you need to be clear with your dimming system when planning for the hotel lobby chandelier, make sure its light source can be designed to match the required dimming type.

Installation preparation. Clear photos of the project site ceiling and details drawing need to be sent to your manufacturer together with the lobby chandelier design, so the suitable mounting structure can be produced with the chandelier. Make sure the drawings are clear enough to show all the ceiling structure and details like AC pipes, exhaust pipes… Some parts of the custom chandelier maybe to too huge for production or transportation, in this case, they need to be assembled or welded in the project site, all required installation materials and supporting forms need to be done before lobby chandelier installation.

Chapter 4: How to find a good custom lighting manufacturer for your chandelier?

Due to the production facility and production experience, not all the lighting factory can make the custom chandelier well, especially the extra-large chandeliers for the hotel lobby.
To find a good manufacturer for custom chandelier projects, obviously, the best way is to visit them to see how they are doing with their custom lighting projects.
You can pay attention to following facts during your visit to the factory who you are going to work for your custom chandelier project.

1． Collect general information about the manufacturer, the most important facts will be: the size of their production plant, what production facility they have, how many employees/workers, how many engineers, what kinds of custom lighting they have been doing…

2． Check carefully for any lighting products in their production line. These are the lighting fixtures they make for other projects, which can tell you all the truth about their quality control. You can check the materials using and overall quality level, focus more on some details, for example, the thickness of metal material, the LED chip & driver brand, the package quality… Check the showroom, you can also find out more about their quality standard.

3． Check with the factory for any custom lighting projects they did before. For example, if you are going to make one huge chandelier for the Shangri-La hotel, so you need to make sure that the manufacturer has similar production experience for the same level hotel project, and better that they have produced a similar design with the what you need. This is critical for making a qualified extra-large custom chandelier.

4． About the service you have from their sales team. Not like the general chandelier and other lighting fixtures, those with standard specifications and once you trust the factory you can order and ship them. For the custom chandelier, it needs lots of communication before and after your order, as you need to discuss with them a lot so they can understand your design, and the sales team need to give you lots of feedback on the whole design based on their experience and during the production, lots of phone call and email communication involved during this cooperation. So if you find that their sales team is not professional, or slow on response, or decide everything just by themselves without informing you, working with them can come out to be a nightmare and cause you lots of headaches on these custom chandelier manufacturing.

In case you can not visit your manufacturer personally or sending your agent, nowadays with so many social Apps, it will be still easy for you to have video calls with them for checking out some facts. Always start a sample order before the real bulk order, to see their service and product quality, this will be very helpful in finding the good manufacturer for your custom chandelier.

Chapter 5: How to make a good custom chandelier?

After you find a reliable custom chandelier manufacturer, the following working procedure will help you make a good chandelier based on your project need. Actually, you will see that all good manufacturer following the same or similar production procedure:

1. You need to send all your design drawings or design idea to your supplier, including material type, material finishing, lighting output, project location, and project type. Make sure they understand well your design and what you expect.

2. The engineers will check your design based on their manufacturing experience, to decide the suitable structure and best material to realize your design idea.

3. The engineers will issue production shop drawings or 3D design drawings, to re-confirm the final custom chandelier design.

4. The factory will prepare small samples, or at least prepare all related material samples so you can confirm the actual design and material before production.

5. Production shop drawing and material samples confirmed by both you and the factory, order production start accordingly.

6. Factory to proceed with the metal structural part production, after rough metal part is done, need the first trial installation with other parts such as glass or crystals, to make sure all production is done precisely as design drawings.

7. Metal part polishing and then with the finishing done on the metal part, usually by plating or painting.

8. Assembly for all the parts after finishing done, do relating testing on all the electric parts for the chandelier.

9. After assembly and all testing are done, hang the chandelier to see the overall design and lighting output, make sure they are the same as confirmed design idea.

10. Prepare the installation manual and even prepare installation video for the complicated custom chandelier, especially for the big chandelier which has many different parts to assemble together.

11. Product package arrangement. All main parts need to be wrapped with styrofoam before packing inside the carton, and the fragile part such as glass, crystal & ceramic… need an external wooden package for extra protection. For the extra-large chandelier, as many different accessories involved, need to have very clear labels outside each carton.

12. Prepare the installation in advance, to decide who will be responsible for custom chandelier installation and all materials required for safe installation.

Chapter 6: How to do an inspection for custom chandeliers?

You are suggested to follow the custom chandelier inspection steps here, so to have full control of their quality to meet your project need.

Inspection starts from the production shop drawings. Verify the overall design, dimensions, finishing, etc. For the large custom chandeliers, a detailed installation plan from the factory is required to ensure the project site installation condition workable. Ask the factory to provide material samples, finishing swatches, to keep them as control samples for next stage inspection.

Inspection when metal part or main structure part done. From the trial installation, you can see if there is any problem with the dimension and its structure, by checking and comparing it with the production shop drawing. To find out any problem and do modification at this stage, can avoid lots of trouble and production delays for the whole project.

Inspection after finishing & assembly done. At this stage you can see the actual chandelier design and the lighting output, to check if this is the same as your design, use the control sample to check the materials and finishing, make sure they are done correctly.

Package inspection. Usually, it is a long way from the factory to your project site when ordering from China or any country abroad. Make sure the package suitable for sea freight or air freight. Check that all accessories are prepared well, including small things like mounting brackets, screws, LED drivers, canopies. Inspect that if all packing box labels are clearly marked, and if the instruction manual is accurate and detailed.

Chapter 7: Custom chandelier FAQ

Question: What is the production time for custom chandelier?
Answer: Usually it will take 4~8 weeks to produce the custom chandelier after confirming design drawing and material samples. The final production time will depend on the structure and size of the required chandelier.

Question: can you produce my chandelier in a short time?
Answer: It will depend on the final design of the custom chandelier, for some design which we manufactured before, we can get the production done in 2 ~ 4 weeks.

Question: what material to prepare and send you for manufacturing the custom chandelier?
Answer: The more information and details you provide, the more we can understand your design idea and produce exactly the same, so if possible you need to send us your design drawing, material required, light source required, dimmer type, layout plan of installation area… In case you don’t have this information, you can first tell us your design idea, we can confirm others with you step by step.

Question: How to make sure the custom chandelier comes out the same as my design?
Answer: Before production, we will provide a production shop drawing and material sample for your confirmation. You can arrange the inspection during our production to make sure we work according to your confirmed design, or we can update your production status for each step so you can see clearly on the chandelier design.

Question: How to choose the light source for custom chandelier?
Answer: For easy maintenance purpose, if possible always select the replaceable LED light source, such as E26/27 bulb, E14/E12 bulb, GU10 bulb… they are with long service life, easy to work well for several years and after that easy for replacement. If you need to use integrated LED due to the chandelier design, always use good brand LED chips and Drivers, and need to have a well-designed heat dissipation part.

Question: What is your warranty on the custom chandelier?
Answer: We have 2 years warranty for all the electronic parts of our custom chandelier, and 5 years warranty for the material & finishing parts.

Question: Is it possible to make sample for custom chandelier, and how much for the sample fee?
Answer: For normal size custom chandelier, yes we can make samples for your confirmation before confirming bulk order, the sample fee will be double unit price based on the bulk order price. For extra-large chandelier, we can make small scale samples with the same design and material for you to check the design and quality, the sample fee will be depended on the design.