Is it true Americans aren’t used to have light fixtures hanging from the ceiling?

41 comments

1. I don’t think hanging lights are preferred, but nobody’s going to look twice if you have them. I have some in my kitchen, and nobody has commented about the type of fixture.

2. This is not true. Everyone I know has overhead lighting and most have ceiling fans.

3. Ceiling fixtures are extremely common.

4. What? No. I have three light fixtures hanging from the ceiling in my apartment. Two are attached to ceiling fans. There are like 150 million dwellings in the US. You’ve been in four.

5. I’m sitting under one right now. They’re pretty common in dining rooms over the table, but a lot of newer places either have them in ceiling fans or as canned lights built into the ceiling.

6. I’ve always had either hanging lights, ceiling fixtures or recessed lighting in the ceiling. Now in southern AZ I’m lucky enough to have more skylights than ceiling lights 🙂

7. We have ceiling lights. Not all American homes are identical.

8. I would say it depends. My home has light fixtures, and the same goes for most of the people I know.

9. Every home I’ve ever lived in has light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. I only know one person who doesn’t have lights affixed to his ceiling and that’s because he was cheap while building his home.

10. My apartment only has a kitchen light, a ceiling fan with light, hallway and bathroom lights. The rest of the place I had to get lamps for.

11. I depends on when the house was built here. Most homes that have been built recently have recessed lights. Homes before, probably like 2000 have ceiling fans and lights on the ceiling and then homes older than like 70s tend to have no ceiling or little ceiling lights generally unless put in after.

12. i dont think ive lived somewhere without any ceiling fixtures.

13. They kind of come and go? Like eschewing ceiling fixtures for lamps was a thing in the 70s. Recently there’s a lot of LED perimeter lighting and somewhere in there recessed lights were all the rage. But there have also been gaps in between where hanging stuff was the norm and chandeliers have been pretty common in like foyers and dining rooms throughout.

    It’s not some rarity, but an individual person may have lived in houses that mostly don’t have then is what I’m getting at.

14. I have hanging light fixtures and glass covered lamps attached to the ceiling. Almost all light fixtures in older houses have some sort of protruding light.

    Can lights/recessed lighting are in newer construction.

    Floor lamps are common too but certainly not the only thing. I am kind of amazed you were in four houses and none of them had ceiling lights.

    Where the heck were you?

15. This is not true. I have quite a few ceiling mounted lights. And high hats etc are very common.

16. I have a hanging light fan combo in most of my rooms.

17. My parents have standing lamps, hanging lamps (including the ugliest chandelier ever, but it was there when they bought the house), and ceiling lights all in their kitchen.

18. Uh… No. Perhaps in a certain time period. The house I live in was built in the ’60s and pretty much the only room with ceiling lights are the kitchen and dining room, the bathrooms and the bedrooms. The hallway and living room don’t have ceiling lights.

    Don’t even get me started on the basement. I have no clue what drugs the original owners were on when they had this house designed.

19. Old homes don’t have built in light fixtures. Generally speaking. My house didn’t even have a bathroom when it was built.

20. No

21. I’ve never lived in a house that didn’t have ceiling fixtures at least in bedrooms and dining room, and I’m old have lived in quite a few houses.

    I tend to hate overhead lighting, so I rarely use them and normally use floor or table lamps instead.

22. Depends. Most of my apartments in Pittsburgh were older and only had one or two ceiling fixtures, usually in the kitchen and maybe the bedroom. None of my living rooms had ceiling fixtures. I remember moving to a nicer/newer apartment once I was out of college and had a salaried job and thinking it was so fancy to have a living room with ceiling lights.

23. Regional thing, frankly. Just like many places have box lights all over the place

24. Most homes I’ve been in have ceiling lights in every room. A few did not have ceiling lights in the living room, but they did in every other room. I have never experienced a place that didn’t have ceiling lights at all.

25. My current home has ceiling fans with lights included, hanging lights, ceiling lights, and recessed lighting but I have lived in some places where there were no light fixtures of any kind and we bought standing lamps.

    I guess it just depends on where you live.

26. They are extremely common. That being said, I have had apartments in the past we’re the only built in lights were in the kitchen and bathroom. That being said, I was also very cognizant of the fact that it wasn’t the norm.

27. I live in a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house built in the late 90s/early 00s. Every room has a ceiling light. Including the laundry room and our attached garage. In 49 years I’ve moved 30+ times and have lived in 8 states. I’ve lived in single family stick build homes, more than one manufactured home, apartments and cookie cutter 90s housing boom houses, and I can’t remember one that didn’t have ceiling lights. I’ve used floor lamps, table lamps and desk lamps along with ceiling lights to provide different lighting amounts as I needed. I am using a table as my only light right now because I don’t need/want the amount of light the ceiling lights will provide.

28. Ceiling fans are uncommon but ceiling lights are the norm, they often are supplemented with stand lights often for more coverage or decoration

29. i am sitting under a chandelier currently in an american apartment

30. Weirdly enough our home has ceiling fixtures in all rooms (plus stairs and hallways) except the bedrooms.

31. I have recessed lighting. Hanging light fixtures and ceilings fans with lights are very common.

32. Where the hell would I put all my ceiling fans if I didn’t have junction boxes in the ceilings?

33. Ive been in my current place since 2021. The living room, and two of the bedrooms do not have light fixtures. We ended up getting lamps. The kitchen has the light fixture, but it’s an open concept so it reaches to the living room.

    It takes a while to adjust as I’m so used to having a light on the ceiling for each room.

34. Only 1 room in my house doesn’t have a ceiling light fixture

35. Most American houses are built in housing tracts. The electrical code for living rooms and bedrooms is having a minimum of 1 switches receptacle also known as a half hot. The contractors are trying to maximize profits so they do the minimum because lights are more expensive than a receptacle. If you want overhead lights, you have to pay extra to the contractor to do that work. People are cheap so they go for the minimum. Some housing developments will advertise overhead lights and other add ons like solar as included to entice the buyers. Source: was an electrician for 20 years.

    TLDR: people and contractors are cheap so they do the bare minimum that code requires when homes are built.

36. You’ve mentioned hanging light fixtures, but other “ceiling lamp” types are recessed/flush or fixtures that sit up against the surface the ceiling. With the exceptions of the main vaulted living room the, den, and two bathrooms in my house, every other ceiling has a lamp in, on, or hanging from it.

    * foyer – 1x chandelier
    * kitchen – 2x recessed, 1x hanging
    * dining room – 1x chandelier
    * 3x hallways – 1x surface lamp each
    * 3x bedrooms – 1x ceiling fan/lamp each
    * master bathroom – 1x ceiling fan/lamp

    That makes 12 ceiling lamps in my house. If you count the basement and garage, that’s 12 more.

37. LMAO this might be the funniest post I’ve ever seen on here

38. I my immediate sight I can count three lights hanging from the ceiling in my home. Four if you count the one on the ceiling fan above me. Four American homes is not representative of the American population.

39. Ceiling fixtures are so common as to be the norm, where did you get the idea we “aren’t used to” them?

40. Everyone room in my house has them.

    The house I grew up in didn’t have any though.

41. Just when you think you’ve seen the dumbest post on here another one pops up.

    Seriously, if you came to my house you’d be asking “do Americans not have lamps?” All my lights are overhead fixtures. I don’t have a single lamp in my house.