Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described that provide for signaling and switching of beam pair links (BPLs) for directional transmission beams between a base station and a user equipment (UE). A threshold value may be determined, which corresponds to an amount of time for a UE to receive and decode control information, and apply a different BPL than a current BPL that that is in use. The UE may maintain a BPL for data, which is used during data transmission time intervals (TTIs) until an indication is received to change the BPL for data. The UE and the base station may determine to change between BPLs based at least in part on the threshold value and a scheduling offset between a control channel transmission that allocates resources for a data TTI and a start of the data TTI.