Room by Room
The best entryway lighting ideas for a small entry come down to one warm sconce at about 66 inches beside or above the console, on a dimmer or a timer, instead of a flush mount on the ceiling. The ceiling light lights the floor and your shoes; the sconce lights the wall, the bowl for the keys and the face of whoever's coming in, and it reads as a lamp lit for your arrival. Our entryway is a narrow hall between the front door and the living room, with a coat rack on one wall and a console table on the other, and it had a builder-grade flush mount that contributed nothing to the first impression of the house. I replaced it with a single brushed brass sconce with a small linen shade above the console, and the change surprised me: the overhead was adequate, the sconce is welcoming. This post is the sconce and its height, the timer that lights it before we get home, the ten entryway lighting ideas that suit small halls, hallways, apartments with no entry at all and entries with high ceilings, the bulbs, the console and the mirror, the outside light that pairs with it, the mistakes, and what ours cost.
An entry is a transition, not a room, and it's seen for ten seconds at a time: coming in, going out, greeting someone at the door. A flush mount at full brightness on the ceiling says "corridor." A shaded sconce at eye level on the wall says "someone's home," because it's the light of a lamp rather than a fixture, and it lights the things you touch in an entry, the console, the hook, the bowl, the mirror. It also lights the person: a guest at the door lit from the side at eye level looks like themselves, and one lit from the ceiling looks tired. There's a specific quality to side-mounted shaded light in an entry, intimate, like a lamp lit for your arrival, and guests notice it without being able to say why.
Center of the sconce at 64 to 68 inches from the floor, a little above eye level so the shade hides the bulb and the light falls on the console below; ours is at 66. Position: above the console table, centered on it, or beside the mirror if there's one, or beside the door on the hinge side if there's no furniture. One sconce in a narrow entry; a pair flanking a mirror or a door in a wider one, 30 to 40 inches apart. Type: a shaded sconce, linen or opal glass, with light down and a little out, in a metal that matches the door hardware; ours is brushed brass with a 5-inch linen drum, small enough not to catch a coat sleeve in a 40-inch hall. Bidirectional sconces that throw light up and down make a low entry ceiling feel higher and are the choice for an entry with an 8-foot ceiling and nothing on the walls. The entryway fixtures collection is where ours came from.
The sconce comes on at dusk on a smart dimmer, at 40 percent, and goes off at midnight, so when I come home from anywhere the lit sconce above the console is the first thing I see when the door opens. It looks like home is glad I'm back. It's also the light that's on when a guest arrives, so nobody is fumbling for a switch in a dark hall with a coat in one hand. A $12 plug-in timer does the same for a plug-in sconce; a smart dimmer does it for a hardwired one. Of everything in this post, the timer is the part I'd tell a friend about first, because a sconce you have to switch on is a fixture and one that's already lit is a welcome.
A narrow hall like ours: one shaded sconce above the console at 66 inches, on a timer. A square foyer with a ceiling over 9 feet: a small pendant or lantern hung with its bottom at 84 inches, plus a sconce beside the door. A wide entry with a mirror: two sconces flanking it at 66 inches, 36 inches apart. An entry with stairs: a sconce at the foot of the stairs at 66 and the stair light on a deviator so it's on from both ends. An apartment with no entry at all: a plug-in sconce beside the door on strips, a hook and a shelf under it, and the door wall becomes the entry; the plug-in sconce is the whole entry in a studio. A mudroom entry: a sconce at the bench plus a motion-sensor light in the closet. A dark entry with no window: a warm-dimming bulb in the sconce and a lamp on the console on the same timer. A low ceiling under 8 feet: a bidirectional sconce, no pendant. A rental with a flush mount you can't remove: a 2700K bulb in it, left off, and the plug-in sconce. And the outside: a matching sconce beside the front door, in the next section.
The entry begins on the porch. An outdoor sconce beside the front door, on the latch side, at 66 inches, in the same finish and roughly the same shape as the one inside, so opening the door doesn't change the light, only the temperature. Ours is the blackened steel lantern from the porch post, on the same dusk timer, and inside the brass sconce takes over; the finishes differ and the shape rhymes, which is enough. If you can only do one, do the outside one, because the porch light is the one that says the house is occupied.
2700K, always, in an entry, and 2400K if you can find it in a small sconce, because the entry is seen coming in from cold air and dark and a warm light is the whole point. CRI 90 so coats and faces look like their colors. 400 to 500 lumens, which is plenty for a hall and more than you need at 40 percent; an entry doesn't need to be bright, it needs to be lit. Dimmable, on the timer or a wall dimmer, so it drops for the evening. Frosted or shaded, because a bare bulb at 66 inches is the first thing a guest sees. Nothing over 3000K, which turns the first ten seconds in the house into a waiting room.
The sconce lights three things and they should be worth lighting. A console table, narrow, under 12 inches deep in a hall, with a ceramic bowl for keys, a small plant, and whatever I'm reading, and nothing else, because a hall table collects mail in a week if you let it. A mirror above or beside it if there's wall, at 60 inches to center, which doubles the sconce and lets you check yourself on the way out. Four hooks at 66 inches on the opposite wall, wooden or iron, for the coats that are in use, and the rest in the closet. The five-object rule from the cottage post applies here more than anywhere, because the entry is the room seen most and looked at least.
A two-storey foyer wants a pendant or a lantern, because the volume asks for something hanging, and the rules are: bottom of the fixture at least 84 inches from the floor and, if there's a window above the door, centered in it so it reads from outside; a fixture about 1 inch wide for every foot of the entry's length plus width, so a 6 by 8 foyer takes a 14-inch fixture; and a sconce at eye level anyway, because the pendant lights the space and the sconce lights the people. Our ceiling is 8 feet and the pendant question never arose, but my sister's foyer is 18 feet tall and her lantern hangs at 9 feet with two sconces at the door, and the sconces are what make it feel like a house rather than a lobby.
A hallway takes the same sconce every 8 to 10 feet at 64 to 66 inches, staggered on alternating walls if the hall is wide enough, all on one dimmer at a third, and a deviator switch at each end. In a narrow hall, sconces with a shallow depth under 4 inches so no shoulder catches them, and a bidirectional shape to lift the ceiling. A runner on the floor and one row of small frames at 58 inches, lit by the sconces, and the hall stops being a corridor. Ours has three sconces over 24 feet and a rechargeable sconce with a sensor by the stairs for the night, and the same timer runs the lot.
In December the sconce comes on at 5:15 and the entry is the room we use most in the dark; in June it comes on at 9 and we barely notice. The timer tracks dusk, so nothing changes, but the bulb does: a 2400K filament in winter, when the entry is a refuge from the cold, and a 2700K in summer, when the door is open and the porch light does more. A wreath hook at 60 inches on the door side and nothing else seasonal; the entry is too small for decorating and too important to clutter.
The flush mount, for eight years, because it was there. The first sconce at 60 inches, which caught my husband's coat sleeve every morning; moved to 66. A 3000K bulb, which under brass looked yellow-green; 2700K fixed it. A shade too big for the hall, 8 inches, which stuck out into the walkway; the 5-inch replaced it. And no timer for the first year, which meant the sconce was a light I remembered to switch on about half the time and a welcome the other half.
Nobody has ever commented on our entry sconce, and everyone slows down in the hall, which is what I wanted. What they notice is the bowl for keys, because the light is on it, and the mirror, because it's lit from the side, and the fact that the house was already lit when the door opened. The fixture itself is small and brass and not trying to be seen. That's the test of entry lighting: if the fixture is what people see, it's too much; if the welcome is, it's right.
The sconce, $78. The smart dimmer, $48. The bulb, $6. The electrician had already been for the living room and did the box from the flush mount's circuit in twenty minutes as part of that visit; on its own it would be about $150. Under $300 with the electrician, under $140 as a plug-in on a timer, and the flush mount went to the laundry room, where it's the right light.
The entry switch should be by the door on the latch side, at 42 inches, and the sconce on the timer means you rarely touch it. If the hall has a second door, a deviator at that end. A motion sensor on an entry sconce is a mistake, because it makes the welcome twitch on as you reach the door instead of being there already; sensors belong in closets and on porches, not on the light that says you're home.
The entry is the last room you see when you leave and the first when you return, and it's the one most houses light worst. One warm sconce at eye level, above the thing you put your keys in, on a timer that beats you home: that's the whole idea, and it's cost less than any other change to this cottage. When the door opens and the sconce is already lit, the house looks pleased to see you. It's a small thing. It happens every day.
Shop this post: entryway light fixtures and outdoor wall lights for the porch side of the door