Lighting!

When we built our house in 2014, I was so excited to pick out all of our finishes.  I had been dreaming about paint colors, counter tops, cabinets, backspashes and lighting for months.  The day that we had our final selection meeting, I was pretty disappointed to find out that I didn’t like any of the lighting options that were offered.  I mean, they weren’t just bad, they were awful.  Most all of my neighbors agreed with me and went out and got their own lighting, so none of them should be offended if they read this post, ha!

We pretty much lived with a bare light bulb in most of the ceiling sockets for a few months until we found the lighting that we wanted.  It was a little tricky at first because I really wasn’t sure how our furniture would fit into this new house, AND because we doubled our square footage, we needed to buy a lot of furniture.  The furniture really dictated our lighting choices so it ended up being a slow moving process.

Dining Room

The first room we started in was the dining room.  I looked and looked, but couldn’t find anything I liked, so I let Greg work his online shopping skills and he found us this geometric gunmetal chandelier online at shadesoflight.com for $379.

I loooove this light!  Seriously, I feel like it sets the mood for the dining room and somewhat gave me some direction for the rest of the space which included the kitchen and family room.

Here’s how it looks in our house now.

Kitchen

Although, I loved the dining room light, it led to a dilemma…I didn’t know what pendant lights to choose for above our island.  The dining room and kitchen are adjacent to each other and I felt like they had to coordinate somehow.  Now, I’m not saying that the lighting has to be matchy-matchy, but I wanted it to look like it went together.

Greg to the rescue again.  He found these matching pendants on another site.

Unfortunately, they don’t have them anymore, but I did find a similar pendant light at Joss & Main, which actually has a glass globe that ours don’t have.  They’re 22% off right now for $96.99 a piece!  That’s a really good deal!

Family Room

Now onto the family room.  Once again, I wanted the lighting to coordinate somewhat because of our open floor plan.  We knew we wanted a ceiling fan in this room with combination lighting, and it had to look rustic.  That’s not an easy find friends!  Guess who got the job of finding that one?  You guessed it.  My online shopping genius hubby!

Here’s what he found and it’s perfect!

This ceiling fan is also from Shades Of Light.  It sells for $378 and it has the fan/light combo that I wanted.  I have a few wall hangings that mimic the weathered wood on the fan blades so it really goes well in the family room and also compliments the lighting in the kitchen and dining room.

 

Office

I should just call him my lighting guru/design assistant because Greg came to the rescue again with the lighting in the office!  I did have ultimate design control though, hehe!

I wanted something with a masculine feel to go with the vintage campaign-style desk and credenza and this fit the bill.

This is how it looks in our office.

I feel like the wrought iron definitely brings in the masculinity that I was looking for.  It gives off this cool 70’s vibe which happens to be when the furniture was made.  Greg and I were doing high-five’s over this one!

 

Front Room

Ok, so this isn’t my favorite light, and we’ll probably change it out at some point.  I honestly can’t find the link for it, but I know we got it from Wayfair.  

The thing I like least about this light is this weird plastic piece under the bulbs.  I know it’s there to soften the light, but it just looks funky to me.  For now, at least there’s no exposed light bulb in this room.

Do you have a favorite place that you like to shop for lighting?  Emily Henderson did a blog post on lighting last year and highlighted a ton of really great resources.   One of which, School House Electric & Supply, is a favorite of Cheryl’s. We have several more lights to buy for the bathrooms and master bedroom, so I’m going to add School House to my shopping list.

Let me know what you think and if you have any cool places that you like to shop for lighting.