Thềm Chiều café · Nhiêu Lộc ward (formerly District 3), Ho Chi Minh City · 2025
Thềm Chiều café: a 3.6 m ceiling and twelve low pendants
Recessed lights made the café as even as an office. Twelve Hạ Chí pendants 80 cm above each table, installed overnight. VND 38,320,000 before VAT.
- Owner
- Ngô Thảo Vy
- Room
- 40-seat café, 12 tables, ground floor of an alley townhouse, 3.6 m ceiling
- First light mock-up
- 48 hours after the photos
- Revisions
- 2, over 5 days
- Making and test lighting
- 3 weeks
- Installation
- One night, after closing
Thềm Chiều is a café on the ground floor of a townhouse down an alley in Nhiêu Lộc ward, in what used to be District 3. Forty seats at twelve tables, walls finished in earth-coloured lime plaster, and a ceiling 3.6 m high. It already had lights: a grid of white recessed downlights on a single switch.
The room before
By day the café is lit from the street. By night it was lit like an office. Every table, every aisle and every corner got the same amount of light, and the white light turned the earth-coloured walls grey. The owner, Ngô Thảo Vy, sent us two photos, one at 15:00 and one at 20:00, with one question: could each table have its own light without tearing out the ceiling?
The problem in numbers
The 3.6 m ceiling was the hard part. Recessed lights nearly three metres above a tabletop spread out across the aisles before they reach the table. To put a pool of light on each table, the light had to come down, a long way down.
Most of the twelve tables seat two or four, with small tops. A 45 cm shade over each would block the view across the room. The coffee counter needed a little more light than the tables, so the person making drinks can see the cups. And the café could not close for a day: Vy could give us one night.
The mock-up, and two rounds of changes
Đặng Thu Hà sent the first mock-up within 48 hours. She drew the lamps straight into the 20:00 photo, including the light falling on each tabletop and the edge of the wall. Version one used the Hạ Chí pendant (Summer Solstice) at its standard 45 cm, with the bottom of each shade 1 m above the table.
First change: twelve 45 cm shades made the room feel crowded, and from the door you could no longer see the counter. Hà moved to the 35 cm size, VND 300,000 less per lamp.
Second change: at 1 m the light spilled off the edges of the small tables. Hà brought the lamps down to 80 cm above the tabletop, which needs 2 m of cable instead of the standard 1.5 m, at VND 60,000 extra per lamp. The counter got a Tiểu Mãn (Grain Buds) set of three 24 cm seagrass shades; closely woven seagrass pushes the light down onto the counter. The walls stay dark. The old downlights stay too, on their own switch, for cleaning up at closing.
Vy approved this version. The price on the approved drawing was the final price.
Making and installing
Lâm Văn Lộc bent twelve brass frames on the same wooden jig, about half a day each. Huỳnh Thị Mến wove twelve 35 cm shades on one mould so they match, then gave them a matte moisture coat. Khang wired them and left each one lit for 24 hours before packing. Three weeks in all.
On the night, the café closed at 22:00. Khang and Hà arrived with the circuit plan already drawn: one circuit for the twelve table lamps, one for the counter. Each lamp was measured up from its tabletop, its cable set on the spot, and the number under its canopy photographed for our ledger. Hà checked the light at every table with a handheld lux meter. We were gone before opening time.
What it is like now
In the evening each table sits in its own round pool of light, the aisles are dimmer, and the walls are the colour of earth again. The open rattan weave throws a pattern on the ceiling above each lamp. Fifteen LED bulbs with E27 sockets (the most common screw socket, sold in any electrical shop), 2700K (the yellow-white of an old incandescent bulb), 6 W each: 90 W for all the pendants together.
In Vy’s words: “The mock-up even showed the light on the tabletops. Once it was up, I stood in the doorway and it looked exactly like the picture.”
What it cost, and why
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| 12 Hạ Chí pendants, Ø35 (12 × VND 2,600,000) | VND 31,200,000 |
| 2 m cable on 12 lamps (12 × VND 60,000) | VND 720,000 |
| Tiểu Mãn set of three | VND 3,600,000 |
| Café set: mock-up, circuit plan, overnight installation | VND 2,800,000 |
| Total before VAT | VND 38,320,000 |
With 8% VAT Vy paid VND 41,385,600, in two halves: one when she approved the drawing, one after the installation night, once she had switched the lamps on herself. Going from 45 to 35 cm saved VND 3,600,000; the longer cables added VND 720,000. The VND 2,800,000 covers the whole-room mock-up, the circuit plan and an installation that did not cost the café a day of trade.
For how we split light across a small café, read lighting a café under 80 m². See the Hạ Chí pendant, the café set and our page for cafés and homestays.
