The most famous design pendant lights, from the PH5 to the Vertigo

The pendant decides everything: it anchors the table, sets the scale, signs the whole room. From Henningsen's optical calculus to Constance Guisset's parasol, seven lights that inhabit the height — including two mavericks that hang on their own terms.

1. The PH5 — Poul Henningsen, 1958

Henningsen designed the PH5 so that no bulb, whatever its kind, would ever hurt the eye: tiered, calculated shades that redistribute every ray. The five stands for the fifty centimetres of its diameter — hanging above half the tables in Denmark since 1958. See the original and its alternatives →

2. The Vertigo — Constance Guisset, 2010

A giant parasol of fibreglass and polyurethane ribbon, so light it ripples at the slightest draught. Guisset wanted it to be as much a den as a lamp: beneath it, the room suddenly has an inside. A Petite Friture icon from its release, and now in the MoMA. See the original and its alternatives →

3. The Caravaggio — Cecilie Manz, 2005

A bell of glossy lacquered steel, drawn taut like a drop, with a high slit that lets a little light escape towards the ceiling. Designed by Cecilie Manz in 2005, it passed from Lightyears to Fritz Hansen: Danish classicism has never stopped producing. See the original and its alternatives →

4. The Bocci 14 — Omer Arbel, 2005

A sphere of cast glass, clouded like a river pebble, around a diffusing core. The first work of Vancouver's Bocci studio, born in 2005 and since multiplied into clusters in stairwells the world over. See the original and its alternatives →

5. The Viscontea — Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, 1960

A cocoon of polymer sprayed onto a steel cage, a technique imported from America: the light arrives as if through a cloud. Designed in 1960, at the very start of the Flos adventure — proof that material can precede form. See the original and its alternatives →

6. The Nesso — Giancarlo Mattioli, 1967

An orange ABS mushroom, winner of the competition launched by Artemide and the magazine Domus. The Nesso does not hang — it grows on the table — but its orange glow so defined the Italian Space Age that the transgression is forgiven. See the original and its alternatives →

7. The Parentesi — Achille Castiglioni & Pio Manzù, 1971

A cable stretched from ceiling to floor, a tube bent like a bracket that slides and stops by simple friction, at exactly the height you want. Neither pendant nor floor lamp — both at once. Compasso d'Oro 1979, still made by Flos, still unsurpassed. See the original and its alternatives →

And if you spotted it in a photo?

Every piece on this list has its own reference page on Beyit, with the original, its history and alternatives at every price. And if a piece of furniture intrigues you in a photo — an Instagram interior, a film, a period house — scan it: Beyit identifies it.