[2] It is located within the Aire Point to Carrick Du SSSI, the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Penwith Heritage Coast.

The lighthouse, together with the attached keepers' cottages, are Grade II listed,[4] as is the separate engine house (with its fog horn equipment),[5] along with other associated buildings and the boundary walls.

[7] A five–wick Argand lamp was initially provided, by Messrs Chance of Smethwick, near Birmingham;[8] but this was replaced in 1906[9] by a Matthews 3-50mm dia.

Between 1924 and 1926, Pendeen was the first Trinity House station to be fitted with a new, more powerful 12-inch siren, which gave a seven-second blast once a minute.

In 1926 Pendeen was one of the first Trinity House lighthouses to be equipped with an incandescent light bulb: 'in order to obviate a watch being kept during fog both in the engine room and the lantern, electric light has been introduced in place of the petroleum-vapour lamps and the apparatus in the lantern made automatic'.

The lamp used was an Osram 3.5 kW gas-filled bulb, specially designed for Trinity House by the General Electric Company.

[20] In 2023 the revolving fresnel lens assembly was removed as part of a Trinity House project to eliminate the use of mercury from its lighthouses (the lens floated in a cast iron bath containing around 40 litres (8.8 imp gal; 11 US gal) of the liquid metal, vapour from which is now deemed hazardous to health).