Studio Sconce Makeover – From Black To White With Gold Leaf Accents

As a reminder, here’s what the mural wall pendant lights look like…

Those also started off black, and I gave them a makeover so that they would look lighter and more feminine against the mural wall and pink cabinets.

I found these sconces that were a pretty close match to the pendant lights on Amazon. You can find them here. Here’s what they looked like before the makeover…

These sconces were black on the outside, and gold on the inside. But the gold was a dark antique gold. I wanted them to be the light, bright gold of the gold leaf that I used on the other lights. So I used the same products that I used on the other lights to add the gold leaf inside the shade. You can see the difference that make here…

The pendant lights had a raised lip around the outside bottom edge of the shades. Those were very easy to tape off and gold leaf. These shades were a bit different. They had this rolled lip on the bottom, and these were a huge pain to tape off. I had to use little pieces of tape so that I could get each piece behind that rolled lip. This was the hardest part of the project, but it wasn’t difficult. It was just a pain.

But once I had that bottom lip taped off, I added more adhesive and gold leaf to highlight that part as well. It seemed like the natural ending spot for the gold leaf. And then to match the sconces to the pendant lights as much as possible, I chose an ending spot for the gold leaf on the top part that matched the pendants as closely as possible. And with everything gold leafed and clear coated, here’s how it turned out…

They’re not actually installed yet, and I haven’t yet gold leafed the little nuts holding them onto the cabinets. I’ll need to remove the sconces to paint the window trim and add the small trim around the corners. So I’ll wait until everything is done, and then I’ll actually install the lights. Once they’re actually hooked up and installed, then I’ll gold leaf the little white nuts holding them onto the bracket.

But while they’re not functional yet, at least they’re pretty to look at. And I needed a quick win yesterday, so this was a fun project to check off my list.

I’m really pleased with how they turned out. And while they don’t exactly match the pendants in shape, I think they’re close enough that they look like they were bought together as a set.

And I just love the gold. Y’all know how I love some gold leaf! I could gold leaf all the things and be perfectly happy sitting in my gold leafed house and admiring the shine and shimmer. So I get excited any time I can add a little gold leaf to something. Plus, gold leafing is a fun project for me. I find it very relaxing and satisfying.