I've looked at wall lights with little bits of twisted iron, like the railings, and hundred of carriage-type lights with curves or planes, similar to what's there now, and whimsical ones like the Triarch brand carries.

The storm door may disappear or be replaced at some point, and we plan to paint a dark red with dark green trim.

Does a particular wall sconce come to mind?


It seems to me that no sconces will work, but I can't see mounting a light above the fan, either.

I've never tried planting a spotlight in the grass and pointing it except at Christmas.

What would you do? Putting up a roof and more columns is not an option. I just need to light the place.

Your whole doorway (the sidelights and side and top moldings) would be lovely in an antique white -- with your current storm door color ....

Look for a pair of larger lanterns to add visual balance to the currently top heavy doorway ....

Take a look here for what I mean about scale and position (still not able to get into Flickr).

Definitely larger (much) and moved out from the side lights. Paint the side lights/trim/fan all one color and the door/storm another.

If you're keeping the post and/or need other front lights you may want to get from a suite of lights. Good luck - love the house!

Everybody agrees that sconces are the answer, and that they should be about 2 clapboards tall, or a little taller. Most say to move them out a bit farther, too.

I liked this bargain one before I posted, and the size is ok, but I had no confidence about it. It is big enough. Would you like this lantern on the house.?

Do you like this one? It's bigger - a little more than three clapboards tall.

Note also how the "column" closest to the door is built out (you could do this) and the railings are "moved" to the outside of the second column, beyond the door moldings (another possibility). [sorry, not explained that well - but a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out these images)

good luck - your house is gorgeous...

Don't want to be a downer. But trying to save you the expense of ordering new lights and then finding out they won't fit.

If the OP just had the siding put on the home, then I would make them put a face plate, mounting block, trim block (whatever you want to call it) under each of the lights. That is why her current lights have their tail sticking out from the house. If you don't have a perpendicular surface to mount your light, then you are also going to need some kind of light that swivels or hangs freely on a hook.

I was looking for advice firstly with the right "look".
Once I knew what I "should" be aiming for, I figured I could fudge or approximate it somehow, depending on what the contractor told me/was willing to do.

If nothing else, I now know what I need to aim for.

The black option that I posted above is pretty wide, so I thought that would help give the impression of being wider-mounted, and in fact it's from a line called "Old Sturbridge", which should read traditional/colonial enough for the house.

I also thought I had a better chance of using the existing wire hole to satisfactory effect if I got a down-arm or armless lantern.

But maybe it's too authentic for a revival house and only really works on 1700s saltbox?

The paint is alligatored and we aren't replacing or sanding the siding, so I was going to go with a sort of dark color to try to camoflage the condition. But now I'm rethinking that, in light of Teacat's suggestion that I make the entire surround off-white. I wouldn't want a lot of contrast on the house, so if we do whitish trim we'll go for a lighter colored house.

We did sand (with a palm sander!) a house once. But that one was already down to bare wood in some places. This house has been painted at least once since it started cracking; the alligatoring is now effectively preserved for the long run. We are older and less ambitious now.

The poor neighbors. I'm sure they're aghast. There's no reason for the toilet to be at the front door.