There’s a daily moment steeped in magic and mysticism, a short space of time when the world momentarily becomes unrecognisable – not quite dark, not light – and it feels like anything could happen.

Dusk, twilight, post sunset… as the night begins to draw in there’s something special in the air that forward thinking design can help us to appreciate, elongate and imitate. Turning on a dazzling bulb tends to blow it away, that pre-nightfall magic forgotten in the flick of a switch, but the right mix of gentle light diffusion and dreamlike silhouettes can extend and summon a Shakespeare-esque moment of enchantment into the darkening days. Prolong those wistful midsummer nights with our edit of bewitching and beguiling pendant lights to add a sense of the extraordinary to every evening.

To prolong the delicate mood of dusk into the evening darkness, lighting needs a sense of the understated, the gentle and the elusive, to be intriguing as well as fill the room with an enchanting glow.

Slim, barely-there forms are imbued with a sense of illusion and fantasy, as if they are letting you into a design-led secret. Their shape scarcely impacts the room when turned off – is something hovering over there? – but when the switch is flicked, somehow spaces far greater than you would expect are filled with illumination.

Interweaving glowing rings, the Ellisse Major pendant by Federico Palazzari creates a sense of the ethereal with ultra-thin, diffused LEDs. As if fallen from the heavens and tumbling atop of each other, the design seems frozen, waiting to be nudged out of place by an evening breeze that never comes.

There are some very special plants that flower only when darkness has fallen, moments that seem like they come from the pages of a story book or from another realm. Designs which capture the essence of the unbelievable bring a dreamlike, can-this-be-real feel into the home, at once subtle and attention-grabbing to make that moment of discovery all the more magical.

Like an enchanted piece of flora about to burst into blossom, the Heracleum II chandelier by Bertjan Pot melds nature and technology, a suspended bud-covered branch perpetually about to bloom. A geometric form with an organic edge, its high-tech LEDs emit a warm, almost twinkly glow, enhancing its twilight-zone effect.

Floating orbs have long been associated with the unknown, the primal shape simultaneously otherworldly and the organic. The shape has invaded our homes via furniture and smaller pieces recently with the vogue for inviting, rounded forms, but when suspended from the ceiling it naturally takes on a celestial feel, bringing with it the perplexity and abstraction of deep space.

Creating its own undersized universe, the Bolle light by Massimo Castagna is like a suspended set of suns, each sphere emitting a bright (dimmable) glow and hanging in orbiting around a striking angular formation of burnished brass. Both supernatural and slightly uncanny – can it be captured on camera? – giving a room a soft, floaty feel and reminding us of everything we are yet to discover.

While suspended spheres can be organic unearthly shapes, then flying discs talk of unknown advanced technologies, hanging from the ceiling defying gravity and seemingly intended for flying. UFO-like shapes summon a post-sunset mood, filled with the mystery and expectation of that mesmeric, anything-could-happen time of day.

The Plena pendant by Eugenio Gargioni and Guillaume Albouy is, as expected, designed around intriguing technology, emitting light both upwards through its shade and downwards, reflected from the shade. Both glows are soft and glare-free, filling the room with endless fading sunlight.

When the sun has retreated and it’s neither morning or night, when the sky spans purples, pinks, oranges and yellows and the ground is cloaked in darkness, the world is at once utterly beautiful and unfamiliar, time feeling like it’s briefly paused, unpredictable and surreal.

Like it’s been excavated from Sleeping Beauty’s palace, the Zeppelin Pendant Light by Marcel Wanders has the shape of a classic chandelier seemingly veiled in a layer of spider webs and dust after being left unattended for untold years. This permanent resin cocoons the recognisable shape, diffusing light for a temperate glow and creating a feeling of both grandeur and intrigue.