A Quick Time-Travel: When Ceiling Hooks Were Everywhere
If your house dates from the mid-20th century—especially the 1960s or 1970s—ceiling hooks were basically standard equipment.
Back then, people loved:
- Swag lamps (plug-in hanging lamps with long chains and cords)
- Hanging planters with trailing greenery
- Canopies and draped fabric over beds or reading nooks
The hooks I found were almost certainly installed for this kind of swag lamp or hanging décor. Instead of hiring an electrician to hard-wire a ceiling light, you’d plug a lamp into the wall, run the cord up the wall, and swag it across the ceiling using a hook right where you wanted the light to hang.
So, those random hooks? They’re probably not random at all—they’re the leftovers of an earlier lighting and décor system.
