Help Us Decide on Exterior Lighting

THE FARMHOUSE

This summer we’re finally addressing the exterior lighting at the Farmhouse! We have a grand total of 3 exterior lights on our house right now, so this is a much needed upgrade. I’ve been dreaming about a sturdy farmhouse-style sconce by each door, but now that it’s time to order them, I’m a little stuck. I’d love your input on finish options below!

light, screen doors, paint color, hat, jeans (Montgomery wash), top, sandals

That’s the wall light I’m planning to use by each of our doors. I’ve been crushing on it for years now and even bought 3 for the Poplar Cottage exterior. I borrowed one and brought it over to the Farmhouse to try it out and get a sense of scale. But before we go through the finish options I’m considering, I wanted to show you our three exterior doors and where the lighting will be going…

door 1: front door

This is the big first impression of the Farmhouse and I really want to get the lighting right. Right now we have just one fixture hanging near the front door, but it’s in a weird spot and doesn’t provide nearly enough light. We’re planning to add more overhead lights along the porch and add a wall light next to the door (similar to the location in the pic above). I’m hopeful that a light on the left side of the door will help balance out the off-centered front door - did you notice the door isn’t centered between the columns? - and give adequate light up here.

door 2: back door

This is our main backdoor that leads into our new mudroom and gets a ton of use. Yes, swapping the overhead light and tackling the stair situation are also on our to-do list ;)

door 3 :: laundry room door

When I went looking for a photo of our laundry room door, I realized that I hardly ever photograph it. But it’s the door we added to the laundry room - well actually there was once a door here as evident by the concrete stairs, so you could say we added a door back into this space. This exit has no exterior light at the moment and the stairs are also missing handrails - so a bit of work here too.

Design

With the lighting, we’re going for a classic-but-fresh look. That’s basically the design goal for everything on the exterior of our historic farmhouse. Painting the exterior in SW Dover White and SW Laurel Woods got us a long way. As did the paver front walk. And lighting should reinforce it.

Step one is picking out the wall lights. Once I make that choice I think the other lighting will fall into place. As I mentioned, I’m planning to use Rejuvenation’s Carson scone at all the doors since they’re classic, sturdy, and I love them. Here’s a close up of one of the sconces I borrowed from Poplar.

Pretty right?

So which finish would you go for? BTW our house is actually painted a creamy white and has dark green windows. Here are the 4 lighting finish options I’m considering: polished copper, gloss green, matte black/copper, matte cream/copper.