Rustic Lighting We Love

Rustic light fixtures with vintage lines and rich patinas shine in dining rooms, kitchens, living spaces, bedrooms, and baths. Here's a look at our favorite spaces that use rustic lighting for a period-perfect effect.
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Simply Striking

What's Your Decorating Style?

An artfully woven orb turns a simple bulb into a brilliant statement piece. Although rendered in rustic scrap metal, the fixture's rounded shape gives it a formal edge that complements the upholstered furnishings gathered around the distressed trestle table.

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Pumped-Up Profiles

These copper lanterns are weighty enough to illuminate the expansive island below but shiny enough to counterbalance the kitchen's rougher elements. Although the rustic pendant lights are nautical in nature, they perfectly suit this kitchen's collected outlook and country French leanings.

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Camp Cadences

Rustic fixtures enhance every type of home, including mountain lodges, lake cabins, and Southwestern abodes. Here, an antler chandelier stays in tune with the weathered dining furniture and wood floors but advances as a memorable sculpture thanks to the room's white walls and sunlight streaming in through French doors.

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Vintage Vibes

Bronze-shaded pendant lights dangling from plain cords and smaller bronze sconces on a far wall introduce a metal revered in earlier times. The simple fixtures, which stand out in the neutral kitchen and mirror the color of the wood-clad ceiling, stylishly illuminate work spaces and the items stowed on open shelves.

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Trend to Try: Overscale Lighting

Embrace the trend of large-scale lighting fixtures with inspiration from these favorite ideas.

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Patina Matters

When choosing rustic lighting, keep your eye out for fixtures that show more than a little age. Think tarnished silver, antiqued gilding, verdigrised copper, time-shadowed brass, chipped paint, and distressed wood finishes. This lanternlike construction combines discolored glass and weathered tin to create a striking fixture with plenty of quirky appeal.

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Organic and Opulent

The most fetching of rustic light fixtures bring outdoor materials and natural motifs inside. Crafted of sticks and twigs, this charming chandelier boasts a graceful shape that, thanks to spritzes of white and silver paint, takes a dramatic turn toward vivacious.

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Bright Idea

Gray-washed beams, streamlined surfaces, open shelves, and sleek cabinets present a contemporary take on rustic style. With so many noteworthy elements, the homeowners opted for a simple Edison-bulb pendant above the sink. The room's pale finishes and natural light allow the fixture's black details and shapely bulb to make a splash.

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An Elegant Glow

Antique chandeliers sporting worn patinas make great rustic lighting options. They offer finely figured silhouettes that supply modern lighting function in a home's private and public spaces. In this bathroom, a chandelier works hand-in-hand with weathered relics and a period bathtub to establish vintage cottage character.

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Go Bold

Rustic finishes showcased in large shapes have a bigger impact than a row of smaller fixtures. This elongated look-at-me lantern nearly mimics the length of the farm table below and mirrors the expansive width of windows. Its open design and symmetrical arrangement of candle lights keeps the large fixture from overpowering the eating area's simple furnishings.

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Textural Tableau

Sconces outfitted with drumlike mesh shades direct light downward to illuminate a mantel crafted from a rough-hewn beam. The mesh shades imitate the color and texture of the mantel but contribute rounded shapes that soften the fireplace's hard surfaces and straight lines.

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Personality Plus

Suspended above prep stations and tabletops, rustic lighting fixtures bring pretty profiles to the space between surfaces and ceilings. This homeowner used a trio of rustic pendants with the contours of factory work lights to keep interest high in the kitchen and adjacent eating area.

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Candle Light

Crystal-draped candelabras and tapers rising from pretty stands supply old-timey lighting well-suited to illuminating farmhouse-chic interiors. A half-urn mounts this candelabra to the wall; when lighted, it emits a romantic shimmer in sync with the vintage frames and painted sideboard arranged beneath.

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Shaded Right

Old-world designs demand fixtures that emit more than just light; they need to appear as if they have been around for centuries. This overscale pendant light wears a shapely shade, seemingly yellowed by age, that directs light down onto the massive island. Want a similar look? Tea-dye a fabric lampshade or try wrapping a ready-made shade in burlap or parchment paper.

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High-Contrast Impact

Bright white fixtures bring a sense of fun to the wood-clad wall behind this kitchen's sink. Their goose-neck forms are reminiscent of study lights, their color is cheerful, and their overall design reflects the eclectic kitchen's blend of natural and sleek surfaces with traditional design elements.

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Global Flair

Burnished brass and milky glass combine to fashion dramatically rustic fixtures that introduce new shapes into a highly textured kitchen design. The globes pick up on the colors of woven and wood accessories, as well as the white finishes and surfaces, but present the hues in a sleeker, shinier manner.

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Mixed Materials

Forget matchy-matchy. Today's most successful designs mix it up in ways that coordinate and complement without overly repeating an element, surface, or shape. This kitchen design incorporates two types of rustic lighting. Black iron lanterns dangle above the island, and carved metal sconces topped with snazzy striped shades frame the area behind the main sink.

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Floor Fixtures

Shop thrift stores and tag sales for standing lamps that deliver rustic lighting with aged patinas. Use them to complete a reading nook, fill a corner, or finish off a seating area. Remember that even nonworking floor lamps can be revived with hardware-store wiring kits.

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Arresting Arrangement

Vintage-style pendant lights enhance this kitchen's contemporary cottage style, while illuminating the island's workstations and breakfast bar area. The rustic lights stand out thanks to their shapely metal shades and aligned placement above the island.

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Old-World Charm

Weathered zinc lanterns with woven fabric caps embellished with nailhead trim combine raw and refined elements to create showstopping silhouettes. Although substantial, the lanterns' panelike openings allow light to flow through and give the fixtures a lighter appearance.

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