swing arm sconces and a gallery wall

I am really excited to share our most recent home project with you, so much so I had to write a post about it! I have been thinking about adding swing arm sconces to the gallery walls here in the living room for a while now. They would add cozy charm to the room, highlight the photographs and add a nice layer of light with the lamps we already have in place since this room doesn't have overhead lighting.

Sounds lovely right? Well there was one problem. Hiring an electrician to cut open the plaster walls to add electricity, then having someone fix the walls was not something we wanted to deal with. 

There had to be a way around all of that added expense and mess, but how? How can we add the charm of a sconce anywhere we want without electricity? Well Brooke Christen came up with the genius idea to add a puck light inside the sconce. She even coined the term "magic light trick". Brooke shares all of the details with lots of inspiration on her blog Nesting with grace.

That's right, these babies are running on batteries! I hot glued the backside of the puck into the sconce, the top piece screws off so I  can replace the batteries as needed.

The puck lights I bought even come with a remote that has timer and dimmer options.


The Lights I went with were a great price, they were brushed silver and I wanted black so I spray painted them. You can find my sconces Here. It would have been easier to buy sconces that were already black but my sweet husband surprised me with the silver ones for my birthday and I liked the brass accents, so I painted them. You can find a set of two similar black sconces here if you want a magic light trick or two for yourself.

It was time consuming meticulously taping them off before painting, but it was worth the effort.

 I love how they turned out. 

I will share some pictures and video of how they look at night over on my Instagram account @sixtyfifthavenue.

Now I've got my eye on a spot in the dining room that would really shine with a"magic light trick" (I couldn't help myself with that one, ha!) I found a few more inexpensive sconces below that would look great (click image to shop) and the puck lights we used.