Wow I'm away from internet for the weekend, and found so many great ideas about lighting in my living room when I'm back. I'm amazed by the ideas and discussions posted. I learned a lot from your suggestions. Thank you all. Katherine Marle, you are absolutely right about everything. We have moved in the house for more than a year, I know I needed to do something about the lighting in the living room, but we are so undecisive on what to do. You are right that right now we only have middle-level lighting. If you look closely, I have a small task light on the piano for my daughter's practicing, one scorch type up-lifting light (temporarily) for lighting up the whole room (not enough admittedly), and three other table lamps around the corners. You are also spot on on pointing out that I don't have a lamp around the louge area, that is precisely because there are no outlets on the floor (away from the walls). We made the mistake of not putting in the floor outlets when replacing the carpet with hardwood floor. I will definitely remedy this when we remodel kitchen & bath next year, along with fixing the lighting in the living room. Currently I'm leaning toward a chandelier (I also looked at the one Susan Mills suggested from RH) above the lounge area, a spot light aiming at the fireplace, wall scones on the wall behind the piano, and table lamps around the sofa/chairs after we put in floor outlets. I'm gathering ideas and pictures on Houzz to finalize the details, and hope to achieve 'correct' lighting that Katherine mentioned.

Nope. It is pretty far in front of it. Ultimately, I am planning a major breaking of stuff in July, where I will redo the plumbing and install a boiler (right now there is no hot water lines here, all the hot water is through electric heaters at the spots where there is hot water), so I figure while I am breaking most walls, I might as well fix this lighting issue. But meanwhile I still have 4 months of awful glare, and I figure anything other than what is essentially a bare bulb has to be an improvement...

I've been looking at the same PB light mentioned above for 6 months trying to find something similar for my slanted ceiling. The large 16 bulb says cords can not be adjusted and the length is 6 ft. That would put it 12 inches above my island surface. I was thinking the 8 bulb same fixture of same design maybe good but I'd have to put 2 side by side b/c my island is 7ft in length. Then those cords the longest is 29" too short. Did anyone find a solution

Check out some sort of single track that can have different heads attached at the spots you want light they don't weigh much so are easy to attach to ceiling. The other system is cable lighting but that will have to be anchored in the wall and the attached to the ceiling but the same idea as above but with cooler heads.