Lighting the outdoor areas of our home comes with unique challenges. Some areas require more light for reasons like safety than other areas, and the fixtures you use need to have enough style that they compliment the overall style of your home. While safety and security are important, so is the atmosphere you create in the social areas of your home, and that includes the areas outdoors where your family and guests congregate.
There are many choices when it comes to outdoor sconce lighting, and there are three main areas of your home where an outdoor sconce can be used to make the most of their function as well as their style. The first and most obvious location is at the front entry way of your home. This is the place you want to have maximum light while still maintaining the style of the home and neighborhood. There must be enough light for visitors to feel safe as they approach, while making you feel safe as you let the dog out one last time in the evening. A larger sconce is ideal here, and most fixtures will be able to handle multiple bulbs. You can experiment with wattage of the bulbs until you get the right light levels.
Just like the front of your home needs light, so does the back. That is why the rear entrance to your home is the second most popular choice for an outdoor sconce. The rear of most homes has more built in security and is used less often by guests and residents as they come and go. For this reason, a sconce a bit smaller in size can be used. You still want enough light to feel safe, but not enough to ruin the atmosphere when socializing on your deck. Many people put a motion sensor on these lights so they can turn it on when they are outdoors, but other than that it will only come on when the motion sensor is triggered.
The third major location for an outdoor sconce is your backyard entertaining areas like the outdoor kitchen or outdoor bar. In these locations mood is more important than security, so it is often better to choose multiple smaller outdoor sconces as opposed to one large fixture. Since these social areas are often spread over a larger area, multiple sconces are sometimes needed whether you want them or not in order to provide light to the entire area.