5 chandeliers to light up your NYC digs

By Lucy Cohen Blatter | January 23, 2015 - 1:59PM

Your average rental (mine included) tends to come with cheap, blah lighting fixtures, but swapping them out with something grand is one of the easiest ways to brighten up your apartment—pun intended. (Just be sure to keep the original fixture to put back when you move out.) And in the meantime, get some design inspiration from these five apartments that prove that chandeliers don't have to be fusty:

One57 grabbed headlines last week thanks to the record-breaking sale of its penthouse, but this two-bedroom, available furnished for almost $14 million, caught our eye for its modern take on a chandelier, which is sleek enough that it doesn't compete with the coffered ceiling and crazy views.

You'd guess that throwing together about a dozen red and orange chairs, multiple graffiti-inspired paintings, and lighting fixtures that look like exploding rocks wouldn't work. But in this $37 million Greenwich Village triplex, it actually does. The fact that the 17-foot ceilings are high enough to accommodate these chandeliers probably helps.

Chandeliers aren't confined to the Upper East Side. This two-bedroom Williamsburg penthouse (relatively reasonably priced at a hair under $2 million), has 18-foot ceilings and a wall of windows: the perfect backdrop for an intricate, multi-tiered model.

That's not to say that a classic chandelier doesn't have its place. For all those "Downton Abbey" fans: This $5 million seven-room duplex is inside a mansion, and the chandelier is of a piece with the antique crown molding, heavy drapes and carved mantel in the dining room.

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