Determining Sconce Placement in the Bedroom

Hello my dear friends. Thank you so much for the lovely thoughts yesterday after my post about feeling not my best. I felt the love and support through the internet. And thank you to my in-person friend who dropped off a sweet package of peppermint brownies with a card to lift my spirits. I’m very lucky to have you all. I’m happy to report that today was less awful than yesterday. I slept through the night without too much issue and got through my day with minimal pain. It did come back a bit in the evening, but any progress is welcome!

Today, I’m going to chat briefly about how I decided where to hang my sconces in my bedroom because I hemmed and hawed about it and thought maybe my reasoning will help someone else who has to make a similar decision! As you may know, I picked a pair of plug-in sconces to go above my nightstands for two reasons: I think sconces in the bedroom look really beautiful (I’ve only ever used table lamps, which I do love, but I wanted to do something different this time), and secondly because I wanted to free up surface area on the nightstand itself. Lamps take up a lot of real estate, so this was my way of rectifying it. After all, how else will I collect six half-drunken glasses of water throughout the week?!? Kidding, I finally broke that habit to save my marriage and now just fill up my Hydroflask every night and bring it up to the kitchen to wash and refill in the morning to drink from the rest of the day. Phew!

My sconces—these beauties were sent to me graciously by Hudson Valley Lighting who also provided the sconces in my living room I adore for their amazing quality—were a bit tricky, particularly because of the proportion of my bed and bedside tables. The light fixture itself is just over 30 inches in height…it’s not small. Couple that with a bed that’s only 43 inches tall and nightstands that stand 25 inches and…there isn’t a lot of room height-wise to work with before things start looking top-heavy and off-balance. That, or part of the sconce ends up hiding behind the nightstand.

My first course of action was to tape out the height of my nightstands (they aren’t here yet, so I had to visualize them with painter’s tape. I meant to snap a photo but it wasn’t much to look at, so I skipped it). Once that was marked, I stopped, decided I didn’t know what to do next and took to the internet for a Google search. “How high should I hang my sconces bedroom” was roughly what brought me to this article from Schoolhouse. I like their lighting, so I decided to trust their editorial content to guide me. This resource suggested hanging the sconce about 5 feet up (while they didn’t explicitly state the following, what I think they meant was make sure wherever the light shade itself starts is 5 feet up…some sconces, like mine, have an arch that goes higher than the light).

Once I had that number in mind, I returned to my measuring tape, pen (because I couldn’t find a pencil…don’t be like me, use a pencil), and painter’s tape to mark what that would look like. For my bed, which is very low slung, it was simply too high. Take a look:

I shifted the measurement down about a foot to 4 feet up from the ground and things felt much better. There was still enough clearance from the top of the nightstand to the bottom of the sconce to look good and intentional, so I marked it out.

But then…I realized I needed to decide how far left and right I was going to put these things. I had always intended on placing them centered to my nightstand, but because my bed’s headboard has an overhang on each side m, that pushes my nightstand out nearly a foot from where my actual mattress sits, and reaching the switch on the sconce would be near impossible with my T-Rex arms. Not to mention that would leave no chance to hang any sort of art above the nightstand and I didn’t love that. It’s all fun and games in Photoshop moodboard land until you have to make some real decisions during install. This is what I originally thought to do:

As someone who likes symmetry (and even my non-symmetrical choices have to be highly calculated for balance), I couldn’t visualize what off-center sconces would look like. Would it be strange? Would it appear to be a mistake? What on earth do other bedrooms look like? Back to Google I want. A simple “bedroom sconces” search led me to tons of photos of mostly off-centered sconces, which gave me the confidence to play around. Why I needed what someone else did to push me to try something different than what was in my mind frustrates me a little. I gotta stop being so rigid, friends and live a little. ANYHOW…

I decided to see what placing the sconce 1/3 of the length of my nightstand in toward my headboard looked like and while I think it looks weird in Photoshop, in person, it’s much better and less stiff than the centered approach. Lesson learned here: Photoshop is a wonderful tool to get you most of the way, but your eye might tell you something very different in person. Trust your eye. This placement makes it far easier to reach the light switch, allows me 2/3 the length of the space above the nightstand to hang something like art, for example, which I’m really excited about. Being that I can’t hang anything above my bed’s headboard (you know…earthquakes and all), I was feeling like this wall in the bedroom was going to be a bit plain and this opens up more possibilities for some personality.

The final placement? Roughly 4 feet up from the ground and 8 inches over from the edge of my headboard, like this:

I’m really happy with it! I marked it all out with my pen (again, go find a pencil, okay friends?) and plan on hanging them once my body feels a little better. I’d ask Charles, but I like the accomplishment of doing these things myself if I can. Besides, I’d probably end up yelling at him for one thing or another and we don’t need that kind of stress in our lives right now. 😉

As for the rest of the room’s design, it’s coming together. I’ve had to abandon my armoire dreams for the moment because I need to make space for a mini nursery with nena’s bassinet/mini crib, changing table, rocking chair, etc. as she’ll be in our room for the first few months but such is a parent’s sacrifice, huh? One day soon, I’ll reignite my search for the beautiful mahogany or burlwood vintage armoire I dream of.

See you tomorrow, FOAS (the last day of the year!!!).