Lighting

We have a couple of opportunities for some good lighting choices in the new kitchen. The area I'm most excited about is the bumped out wall that will have the shallow (12" deep) cabinets. We wanted to keep this area free of upper cabinets so we could put a big painting here (yet to be chosen, fingers crossed for a Danny Heller), flanked by two sconces. I think it will make it a little more homey and less kitcheny. That's a word.

Again, ignore the dumb Ikea home planner picture where it looks like the cabinets are overlapping with the doorway molding. They will not.



So sconces! So many to choose from... and such a potential budget buster. Lighting can be freakin' expensive! I started immediately limiting my search results by price, because I was too often finding awesome sconces I wanted that ended up being $400+ per sconce. Ain't nobody got money for that! Us at least.

These first ones from OneFortyThree ($85) are in the "budget friendly" category and may be my top runner:

These brass Alto Sconces from Cedar & Moss are my favorites, but about twice as much ($179) as the ones from OneFortyThree so we'll have to see where we're at budget-wise once things get underway.

These Soho sconces from Shades of Light are also pricey ($198), but really cool.

Emily used these next ones for the Fig House project, and they are rad. Way too expensive ($320) for us though. 

Here's another cool one from OneFortyThree ($95), but I think the metal shade won't work for us. We don't want a bunch of can lights so these sconces have to give off decent light into the kitchen, not just directed light. I do like these a lot though.

These ones are also from OneFortyThree ($95), but the swing arm is 16" which might be a little too protruding for this area. I like the versatility of the swing arms though.

These cuties are from Schoolhouse Electric and are a decent price ($128).

I wanted these guys ($139) for the living room, above the sideboard and flanking the wood slices on the wall. They might work for the kitchen too though.

We're going to keep the existing electrical work for overhead lighting currently in the kitchen because they are in the perfect locations (one directly above the sink and centered, and the other is in line with where the range is moving), but I don't like the actual lights (they each have three small spotlights you can move around, but they burn out quickly and are kind of ugly). I want to swap them out with pendants instead. I've narrowed it down to a low budget and a higher budget choice.

These Ikea pendants are obviously the lower priced of the two, and I think the ones I'm going to go with. They are white powder-coated metal, with gold accents and a black and white cloth cord. I'm thinking they would look cool with the inside painted gold, and these are cheap enough to try something like that. This is the smaller one ($24.99) for over the sink:

And the bigger one ($39.99) for the middle of the kitchen, in front of the range:

The fancier options are from West Elm, and still pretty affordable. I'm a sucker for milk glass anything but I really like the shapes of these. I like this bowl one too. This is the smaller one (normally $99, on sale now for $79 making this pretty tempting...):

And the bigger one (normally $179, now $143):

Any of these giving you seizures, Mom?