ORC Week 3: How to Mix & Match Lighting in the Same Room

Hello and welcome to Home Glow’s Saturday Blog — the One Room Challenge Thursday edition! If you’re just tuning in, I’m turning a 19th century blacksmith shop into a studio for Home Glow Design. I call it my Ultimate She-Shed, because, after nearly 8 years as a stay-at-home parent to boys, getting back into the creative professional world is a happy, girl place for me. (Not that being at home hasn’t been a happy place, too. It’s just different).

If you are new here, you can catch up on “The Ultimate She-Shed” here:

• Week 1 — A Tale of 2 Schemes
• Week 2 — The Plan and the Problems!!!

Today, I have a couple of updates on the project, and then on to the main topic — mixing your finishes with lighting. Let’s begin!

 

Cork Wall DIY

I always knew that I wanted a cork wall in my office space in order to have ample room to pin up inspiration and fabrics I’m considering for various jobs.

 I’m a part of a few designer Facebook pages, and cork walls have definitely been a topic of conversation before. While there are definitely better, higher-quality options in all different colors and textures, a few designers had used this cork roll from Amazon without problem for more budget-conscious jobs. I also ordered this adhesive. Brian, my GC-extraordinaire, followed these instructions. (I guess I should have said, “DISomebodyElse.”)

With 5 windows and a door in this 11.5′ x 15.5′ area, between the windows on one of the long walls was the only good place to apply the cork.

The holes are where two sconces will be attached directly on the cork to maximize pinning square footage. My work table will go in front.

While I really like the look of the cork plain in many instances…

… this room is going to have enough going on without yet another texture. So this cork wall will be getting a triple coat of White Dove paint.

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Pretty, Feminine Window Treatments

The scheme for this room began with this wonderful Pindler pattern. I love the pale pink, but the grays and especially the bronze and camel colors keep it from feeling cotton-candy sweet.

 

It, along with the chandelier (coming up) were really the 2 key features of what I like to call my Cowgirls-Wear-Sundresses-on-Sundays scheme. I wanted to use the fabric in some ultra-feminine Roman shade window treatments (for my window treatment inspiration, read here), but temper them with a camel color banding on the edges.

It could have been really hard to match that camel color, but one of my favorite trade sources for fabric, Romo, came to the rescue:

 

 

With 222 colors, I was bound to find something. The Safari color worked beautifully. Here’s the finished product!

 

 

My workroom did a bang-up job crafting these ladies. Yes, to pull them up and down often would require a fair amount of window dressing. If you’re thinking about this style in your own home, you might want to consider an inexpensive shade underneath, as I detail in this post.

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How to Mix & Match Lighting Finishes in the Same Room

Our big topic for today! Ok, I’ve written about how to create a lighting scheme for an open floor plan without being boring on this blog before, and I even wrote a shorter, how-to article for New Hampshire Magazine.

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At 178 square feet, the She-Shed doesn’t really count as an open layout … and yet I wanted to be able to mix up my lighting without going overboard.

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To make sure all my lighting fixtures harmonized in this small space, I followed these basic rules of thumb:

1. Assign your finishes to distinct surfaces. — Ceiling lights all the same finish, wall lights all the same finish.
2. Match your undertones. — Brass and oil-rubbed bronze almost always work together because they have warm undertones.  Brass and polished nickel can work together for the same reason. Chrome has a cool undertone and works best with iron/black. Honestly, black goes with anything.
3. When the gulf is wide, build a bridge. — In my opinion, polished nickel and bronze aren’t optimal together, even though both are warm finishes, because of the reddish color bronze has. And yet these are the 2 finishes that I want to combine in this space! I can do this because I have an element (or even 2 elements) that tie them together.

 

Let’s see how.

As I alluded to earlier, my Treeblossom fabric combined with a showstopper light fixture was the inspiration for this design scheme. Here’s the chandelier:

But somehow I had to work my way around from the polished nickel of this fixture to the oil-rubbed bronze hardware on my arts and crafts Stickley desk and make sure this room still somehow felt a little industrial and masculine, according to the history of the building.

The “champagne-hued” 3-dimensional glass coordinates beautifully with the grays in my fabric. Maybe it could be a “bridge” of sorts….

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I continued with the polished nickel finish for ceiling lights, choosing this flush mount for the low ceiling in the main work area.

The holophane glass looks stunning with the chandelier and gives that warm, vintage/industrial vibe despite the polished nickel finish making an easier transition to the industrial bronze fixtures. It also references the champagne glass in the chandelier. So the glass becomes one of the bridges between my finishes.

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Lastly, I selected these oil-rubbed bronze articulating sconces.

Definitely industrial. I love the little key on/off switches on the sides!

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Now, I think these three fixtures work well together overall (the textured glass of the first 2 fixtures is key). However, the colors in my Treeblossom serve as an even stronger bridge.

I like to think of the lighting dancing around the fabric. 🙂

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Want a sneak peek of how it all looks together?

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I’ll have a story — probably next Saturday — about how we wired some of these lights when hard-wiring wasn’t a possibility (this happens all the time in old structures). So if you’ve only tuned in to Home Glow’s Saturday Blog during this ORC thus far, please consider becoming a subscriber so you never miss my tips!

The carpet is supposed to arrive today and be installed on Friday. It won’t have time to acclimate to the space, so my fingers are crossed. Still no word on whether the furniture will arrive in time. Ahhhh!!!

Here’s a little graphic for your pinning pleasure.

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Check out all the other ORC guest participants. Until Saturday — stay sane!

-Amy

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