PH 5 Mini vs PH 5 Ø320 Opal: Choosing the Smaller PH

Louis Poulsen makes two small PH 5 pendants whose main shades sit twenty millimetres apart, and the choice between them is less obvious than that gap suggests. The PH 5 Mini Pendant Lamp is Ø300 mm across; the PH 5 Ø320 Opal is 320 mm. What separates them is finish, the character of the light and how the shade reads over the table underneath it.

Two shades, twenty millimetres apart

Poul Henningsen drew the PH 5 in 1958 around a problem that had little to do with style. Incandescent bulbs kept changing shape and size, and every change brought a fresh risk of glare. His answer was the three-shade system: curved shades stacked so that they light one another, hide the source and send soft light downwards. The PH 5 Pendant Lamp takes its name from that 500 mm main shade. Both of the smaller versions carry the same geometry at around three fifths of the width.

Set side by side, the two small shades are close to interchangeable on paper.

Twenty millimetres of diameter and ten of height are not enough to move either lamp into a different room. Weight is close as well, 1.9 kg for the lacquered Mini against 1.8 kg for the Ø320 Opal, so the ceiling fixing is no harder for one than for the other. The decision is made on finish and on the quality of the light, not on scale.

Matt lacquered aluminium against the opal colourways

The Mini is specified down to the fittings: matt lacquered aluminium with white inner sides, an anti-glare shade, rolled aluminium spacers, a 3 m fabric cord and a canopy. Those white inner surfaces are the working part of the design. Light bounces between the shades before any of it reaches the room, which is why a PH 5 looks bright from below without ever showing a hot spot. The Mini also keeps the small red and blue inner shades that fine-tune colour rendering, so the light falls warm on skin, wood and linen.

The metal versions change the calculation. Polished brass takes the Mini to 3.1 kg and copper to 4.3 kg, both well over double the lacquered weight, and each reflects a warmer tone because the inner surfaces are no longer white. Seventeen colourways are listed in all, from Monochrome pale blush and Monochrome dusty indigo to the graded Hues of rose, grey, orange, red, green and blue.

The Ø320 Opal answers the same question differently. It comes in four colourways, Opal beige, Opal white, Opal pale rose and Opal pale blue, all close to one another in value, so the pendant reads as one soft colour rather than a stack of contrasting rings. Louis Poulsen notes that the red and blue inner shades were taken out of the later PH 5 designs because modern light sources reproduce daylight more successfully than the bulbs Henningsen was working around. In a pale room the Opal recedes into the wall behind it. A Mini in copper, or in one of the graded Hues, does the opposite and holds the eye.

Sizing the shade to the table

A sound working rule for a dining pendant is a shade roughly a third the width of the surface below it. At 300 and 320 mm, both of these suit a table of about 90 cm across, which covers most round tables for four and the working end of a kitchen counter. Louis Poulsen scales the Mini for two to four seat dining tables, kitchen counters and bedside corners, and the Ø320 Opal occupies the same ground.

Longer tables want more than one shade. A pair over a kitchen island, set far enough apart that at least one shade's width of ceiling sits between them, gives two defined pools of light instead of a single weak wash; three in a row will hold a long refectory table. If the table runs long enough that one small shade would look stranded above it, the 500 mm original is the piece to consider, and our PH 5 buying guide sets the sizes against one another.

Ceiling height and the drop

Hang a PH 5 60–70 cm above the table top and the shade sits just above the sightline of anyone seated, which is where the three-shade system earns its keep. The same drop suits both small shades. What changes is everything above and around them.

Neither fixture is deep: 163 mm on the Mini, 173 mm on the Ø320 Opal. Under a standard flat ceiling that leaves a generous run of empty air above the shade, and a 300 mm pendant at seated eye level does not cut the room in half the way a 500 mm one can. In a flat with low ceilings, or over a counter people walk past, the smaller shades are the only sensible members of the family. The Mini's 3 m fabric cord covers the opposite case as well, a tall room or a stairwell drop, and the canopy comes with it.

The light source sets how much room each one can carry. The Mini takes a single E14 bulb up to 20 W and dims with a dimmable bulb; the full size PH 5 takes an E27 up to 75 W. Both are IP20 and made for indoor use, and neither comes with a bulb. The Ø320 Opal lists its own light source details on its product page.

Which of the two to choose

Take the Mini if you want the PH 5 as Henningsen resolved it, with the red and blue inner shades still doing their work, a colour range wide enough to answer a specific room, and the option of polished brass or copper. Take the Ø320 Opal if the room is already pale and you would rather the pendant sat quietly inside it, or if one of the four opal tones is nearer the palette you have. Neither is a compromised version of the other, and because they hang at the same height over the same tables, nobody has to decide on scale.

If neither shade is quite right, the 500 mm original and the rest of the Copenhagen catalogue sit in the Louis Poulsen collection.