An Exterior Light Facelift

Although there's so much going on inside, we try to spend time every week making sure our exterior stays maintained. We actually have some rather large plans for our backyard space, but that will have to wait until next year. Nowadays, we're just happy to keep the lawn mowed and the flower beds weed-free, but making some sort of improvement every year keeps things progressing in the right direction out here.

Last year we got a fence (no small thing…or price! ouch!), but this year with most of our budget and efforts going into the kitchen, we turned our attention to something we could do quickly that would make a big impact. We zeroed in on those minuscule lights flanking our garage doors--I mean, squint!--and started looking for replacements.

Although they look low, these lights are about 8.5 feet up and the 5 inch width was entirely too small for our home. An issue I ran into while searching for a new light was filling the space above the lights. Most lighting, especially more modern exterior lights these days, all turn down. Although tiny, I get why they chose fixtures that turned up--there is just so much room up there! The last thing I was looking for was something black. I'm a lover or brass lighting, just wait until you see the lighting for the kitchen, but this house desperately needed some black to bring it up to date. If you have been following along for any amount of time, you've probably realized I think every space needs a little dose of black.

After a couple weeks of searching, I found a few lights that I liked okay (see below screenshot from my lighting Pinterest board), but they all turned down which I thought would just make things feel unbalanced and bottom heavy.

One night, I was checking out Rejuvenation's site and I started checking out their exterior lights. Initially, I didn't think any of them would work either since they almost all turned down (I feel like a weirdo going on and on about lights turning down or up--okay, I am a weirdo), but then I saw their Carson Straight Arm wall mount had so many customization options including an arm support!

I customized it to my little heart's desire and showed Chris and he loved it. The upward arm support was just the balance the light and garage needed. It felt modern and traditional and a little industrial (our sweet spot) and the all black---gah! It was perfect.

While the rod and chain came right away, the shades took a couple weeks to get here. During that time, we also decided to add some hanging flowers to the center or our garage doors to finish off the mini makeover. We found a heavy duty hanging hook at our local CalRanch and drilled it right into the siding to a backer board behind.

And here they are together!

The lights are dreamy and everything we wanted in our exterior lights. That support arm balances everything out so nicely and the glossy black shade adds some much needed contrast to our exterior and ties into the hardware on our fence.

Here's one last look at a before and after:

Sadly, the flowers got scorched while we were away in Mexico, but we enjoyed them for the last 6 weeks and knew they wouldn't be permanent. Now, I'm just wondering if maybe that would be a good spot for house numbers or just keep seasonal flowers there. We'll see! Fortunately, the lights don't really need any co-stars, they've improved our exterior enough all on their own.