Flush-mount ceiling fixtures don’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve.
Of course, they don’t have the towering height and dazzling finish of chandeliers, or the sculptural appeal of decorative sconces. But when you walk into a room and need immediate illumination, there is no better multipurpose performer.

“You have the opportunity to flood the room” with light, said the New York interior designer James Huniford. “If you don’t have something there, it can feel like a black hole. And if you have a bunch of recessed lights, it starts to look like Swiss cheese.”

Sometimes Mr. Huniford uses simple ceiling lights that could almost go unnoticed, like basic porcelain sockets paired with mirrored bulbs, which he put in his house in Bridgehampton, N.Y. But other times, he aims for high drama with pieces like a custom snaking plaster fixture that he recently installed in a home on the Upper West Side. “It’s like a sculpture,” he said, “hugging the ceiling.”

• Should a ceiling fixture be installed in the middle of a room? Usually, but not always: “Sometimes we use four, each in a corner about two feet off the wall,” Mr. Huniford said.

Is it better to have a switch or a dimmer? “I like to have dimmers on ceiling lights,” he said, so the light level can be reduced to a warm glow at night.

• How large should a ceiling fixture be? “The key to a ceiling light is the scale of the room,” Mr. Huniford said. A small fixture in a big room can look dinky, while a large fixture could easily overwhelm a small room.