If you go to a lighting store that specializes in lights, you should be able to find someone to help you. Take along a picture and dimensions of the area you need lighted.

My builder and his wife walked around our house with us and made suggestions for the types and sizes of lights we would need. They explained to us that lights came in families. If you find living room or kitchen light you like, you might find a chandelier or other light in that same style or family made by the same manufacturer. The lighting company we used had us walk through the store and also had several catalogs to give us.

If you have any pendant lights in a 2-story high room make sure you have a lift installed for them.

Lights on the wall can at least be reached with an extension ladder, but lights in the middle of the room will be an issue.

A manual lift is just fine, the power ones are complete overkill.

Hi Brickeyee
Thanks for the suggestion pf manual lift.
Adellabedella,
I like the idea of family lights

Here's ours:

It's from Solaria lighting. It's one of my favorite things in the house. We have an electric lift for it. It might be overkill, but it wasn't a ton more than a manual lift. Good luck choosing lighting. It was daunting making our decisions bc the universe of lighting is so vast compared to the other category of items we had to choose.

Wow - that Solaria chandelier is GORGEOUS! Love it love it!!

GoBruno, that solaria lighting is absolutely great! Thanks for sharing!

This is the light we have in our foyer. (I don't know how to post photos, so I just have a link to it on a lighting website.) Its pricey, but we LOVE the way it looks.

Here is a link that might be useful: Corbett Vertigo

Does anyone know where to purchase SOLARIA chandeliers? NOT Solaris. Please feel free to e-mail me at heatherdefazio@gmail.com

Thank you so much!

You don't mention style of home.

Two story stairway leading to bridge.

Entry:

Contemporary home (but have seen them in transitional as well), both by Bocci. Auto lifts for cleaning.

When you shop for lights it might help to have some inspiration pictures so anyone helping you can get an idea of the style(s) you like. houzz.com is a great source for inspiration. You can select products, then lighting, then search by type (e.g. Chandelier) and narrow down by style (e.g. Contemporary, Traditional, etc.)

It's also a great source for other inspiration pictures, like kitchens.

Here is ours...it is either Capital or Quoizel.

Oh, poo, you can't see it all...I'll take another pic and post.

I just took this...now you can see it all.

Vidyaram, Garden Web has an entire forum devoted to home decorating. You can find it by hovering over the word Forums in the dark green band near the top of this page and then clicking on Home Forums and then Home Decorating. It's an extremely active forum, so you're sure to get lots of answers to most questions. Also, there's a photo gallery available and you can search "foyer lights" or something similar and probably have lots of photos available to see.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gardenweb decor forum