I didn’t realize we were keeping this a secret. I mean, I knew it was ugly, but I guess I’ve subconsciously refrained from showing it in photos. Like this one…

Or this one…

I thought I had pictures of our ugly entryway light, but it turns out, I’ve always made it a point to keep it out of view. Then I finally found this iPhone picture from days after we closed when our entryway was being painted.

There she is in her brassy glory.

Our entryway is one of our favorite places in our house and was on the ‘must have’ list while house hunting. I’ve always loved walking into a house and seeing a dramatic staircase. Ours is a work in progress. We last left you with some chair rail and we’ve primed underneath it. But we still need to add some semi-gloss paint (which we actually bought a week after the primer, thinking we would start ASAP). The warm weather has switched our focus to outside a bit, but I have been on the lookout for a replacement for the brassy lady.

I have always loved large drum pendants. I’ve loved Crate & Barrel’s Finley Large pendant for quite some time.

The downside to this guy is the basically bare wire. I would much rather have a down rod type of contraption, especially since you will be able to see the wire up close and personal while walking around the upstairs hallway. I decided to search around for some other large pendant lights to see what I could find. I had the most luck on the Bellacor website.

First, I found a light similar to the C&B one, but I started thinking the large entryway needed a little bit more than just a plain white shade. So I found the Nikko Brushed Nickel Pendant:

I like this one for the outer sheer shade and that it reminds me of another Crate & Barrel light, the Eclipse Pendant. I just wasn’t sure if this light had a diffuser at the bottom. You know, that thing that prevents you from staring at/being blinded by the light bulbs up there. I emailed the company a few weeks ago…okay it was so long ago that I forgot about it. They just emailed me back yesterday to tell me that it does indeed have a diffuser. Yay! It goes on the short list.

Another Bellacor option is the Channing 4 Light Brushed Nickel Pendant:

I like that this one would add a nice little “x” view from below. Mike isn’t exactly sold on this one and I think it’s one of those things we’d have to see in person before buying.

These have been my only 2 options up until this point. Yesterday, I got the idea to put a latern style light in the entryway. It is driving me CRAZY that I can’t remember where I saw it. Since I love Pinterest and would have repinned it if I saw it there, I’m going to assume that I saw one of these lights in an entryway on TV. Probably while watching that episode of House Hunters that took place in Atlanta and rocked me to sleep last night. This idea wasn’t a completely new concept to me, since I’ve been loving yet another C&B light, the Cage Pendant, since I first saw it.

So I decided to search around a bit today to see if I could find anything I liked in that style. First, courtesy of Bellacor once again, we have the Harvard Court Bronze 3-Light Pendant:

I’m nervous about the bronze factor in this one and it doesn’t come in brushed nickel. If the bronze is as subtle as this photo, I’m all for it. But if it’s a dark bronze? Not so much. I’m not feeling a dark metal pendant in my crisp and airy entry. Plus the potential chain running from the ceiling to this fixture worries me. As I said earlier, I’d prefer a clean down rod since it’s going to be eye level with whoever walks down the upstairs hallway.

Next! The Framed Linen Shade Latern from Shades of Light:

At first I passed this light up because I wasn’t crazy about the top of it. But the more I looked at it, the more it grew on me. I mean, it’s sort of a pendant/latern hybrid! Plus there are these flush mount lights for the 2 hallway lights that compliment it, but aren’t a square matchy matchy…

I’m not sure what to do yet, but I know I want the entryway to be classy and timeless. We will be finishing up our wainscoting and adding white frames for gallery walls upstairs, downstairs and up the stairs. Originally, we were going to use the old dining room fixture from our condo, but it’s pretty much your standard 5-light fixture. Since we’ll have to hire someone to hang this thing (sadly we don’t own scaffolding), it has to be right and an obvious choice. Changing this light out will not be easy and trial and error will not be an option! But I guess if all else fails, we can purchase this…

Yes, that is the brushed nickel version of our current light available on the Bellacor website.. And it costs $272. Ouch.