The light above our front porch has bugged me since we moved in six months ago. It’s so old. Very dirty. I don’t think it’s been replaced for well over 20 years.

I spent a long time trying to find the right light. I had my heart sent on this option, but it was going to be too long. I took a lot of inspo from this front porch (even thought our front porch looks nothing like this – ha!) and I loved this classic lantern look too. Whatever we ended up with, I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars because… it’s outside. And in about 10 months it will be covered in spiders and cobwebs.

The Before

And yet, it is the first thing you see when walking up to the house. Everyone that walks by the house can see this space. I wanted it to be good and clean and still look classic.

I found this light and was disappointed that it was going to be close to $1,000 with shipping. But it also came in gold for about $600 less (I have no idea why the gold was so much cheaper). And the length of this light was going to be perfect. I knew it needed to be black though, and I knew I didn’t want to spend that much money on an exterior light.

What We Chose

We decided to take a chance and buy the gold light with plans to spray paint it black. It was on sale and therefore final sale. I was prettyyyyy sure we were going to like it, but was a little nervous since there was no going back!

It arrived and deep down I was hoping that by some miracle it would look great as-is in the gold and that we wouldn’t have to paint it. I was wrong. I knew immediately it needed to be black. Instead of disassembling the entire thing and getting every square inch black, we just painted the outer part of the light. I got this primer and this paint off of Amazon.

The light is compatible with a dimmer switch, which makes it awesome at night. I love having the control of making it super bright or just a subtle glow.

Switching out light fixtures might be one of my favorite things in life right now. It’s such an easy way to elevate a space without having to spend a ton of time or effort. I can’t wait to tackle all the other light fixtures in this house in 2023! Here’s to hoping none of them will need spray painted.