PUTTING A LITTLE LIGHT ON EXTERIOR LIGHT SHOPPING

One of the things I particularly enjoy shopping for (other than plants or anything garden related) is lighting. It can also be exhausting because of the mind-boggling amount of options, but in general I find the search for lighting to be pretty fun.

I was happy to have the chance to look for a new light for the garage. We could have kept the old one as there was nothing wrong with it, but it really didn't relate in any way to anything else going on with the house or the garage. My search started at Home Depot, where the selection in the store was tiny compared to what I saw on their website. I didn't care for any of the in-store options so my search went online.

I was looking for a sconce with a slightly rustic or nautical vibe, preferably in a copper or bronze color (to coordinate with the exterior lights on the house). We also did not want to move the location of the light, which to my eye, is a little odd. It seems a little too far from the door and a tad too low. The height was a problem because it meant that we couldn't have anything that hung down, which meant that my original thought of a barn light was off the table.

Here are some of the options we considered.

Link

This is actually the same light we have by the back door on the house.

Liked it a lot, but it doesn't come in other finishes.

Link

Cool but eek on the price!

This next bunch all falls in the onion light category and once you get there the options are all over the place in terms of size, finish and construction. There are bespoke onion lights (guaranteed for life) but I kept the options in the production realm to keep the cost down.

Round

Squishier

Not round or squishy

My favorite of the three onion lights was the last, sort of amusingly called the Vidalia. I thought it was a good compromise between too squishy and too round and I also liked the square mounting plate on it. It had the option of using seedy glass as well, and I love seedy glass on outdoor lights for some reason. Unfortunately it also was almost $400 while the squishy one (call the Cottage Onion) was only $140. For a light that will rarely be seen close up, it would be hard for me to justify spending so much more for relatively small differences and clearly they both have the same vibe.

So we went cheap (well cheaper; it's still more than I had planned on spending) and squishy. Once I started looking at the onion lights I really loved them and the other options became distant memories.

Have you added any new lighting lately? Do you enjoy shopping for lighting or do you find it to be an onerous task?

Bonus points: Can you spot the difference in the boxwood container in those two photos? Yep, different plants. I have fiber optic grass on one side and 'Diamond Frost' Euphorbia on the other side and I try to rotate the container every couple of days to make sure the boxwood grows evenly.