8 Rustic Lighting Techniques For A Mountain Lodge Style Home
Designing a home in the mountain lodge style is a warm and rewarding choice. Mountain lodge epitomizes both majestic architecture and rustic simplicity. The architectural features are typified by vaulted ceilings with soaring windows combined with exposed wood ceiling beams, natural wood, and dark metal finishes. In the fixture design, you will find a unique mix of rustic simplicity, farmhouse charm, and modern industrial styles that, together, make a mountain lodge house feel like home.
What are the best rustic style light fixtures for your mountain lodge-style home? Let's explore the ways to decorate with rustic lighting to match your lodge design in every room and space.
1. Dark Beams and Cast Iron Lighting
Dark exposed beams across the ceiling are part of the charm of mountain lodge design. The light fixtures that pair best with exposed wood beams are dark metal finishes. Cast iron light fixtures and dark bronze bring out the warm contrast in color that is created with natural wood finishes. While keeping that relaxed, subdued color palette that makes mountain lodge style home design simultaneously majestic and cozy, cast iron light fixtures blend perfectly with your space while providing a simple rustic baseline for highly illuminating bulbs.
2. Cozy Nooks and Lantern Pendants
Mountain lodge design also tends to create little nooks throughout the house. In the breakfast nook, the space by the stairs, and the end of the hallways are opportunities to turn a small space into a decorative space. The best way to do that is to start with great lighting. Pendant lights are the perfect way to make a small space feel welcoming, brightly lit, and aesthetically pleasing even before you add a cozy reading chair or a piece of artwork in the space.
3. Polished Bronze and Amber Glass
What other finishes look best for your mountain lodge rustic lighting? In addition to cast iron, look into materials and finishes that glow with the natural warmth of the surrounding wood tones. Polished bronze is not just a popular choice, it's a classic when you're going for a rustic look. Polished bronze has been a favorite for centuries, especially in dark finish light fixtures. The perfect compliment, however, is amber glass.
No matter what hue of your light bulbs, amber glass casts a warm glow through the whole room. Oiled amber or amber mosaic both provide a delightfully subtle play of light and shadow through the room, giving your mountain lodge home a firelight feel without a flame.
4. Cage Chandeliers in Large Spaces
Cage chandeliers combine the styles of farmhouse and industrial to meet perfectly for your mountain lodge style lighting. A cage chandelier (and cage pendant lights) is a large metal finish frame, often in cast iron or dark bronze, that is either open-frame or lined in glass panels. The cage chandelier is at once large and dominant, but also airy and enhances the spacious feel of an oversized great room.
In a farmhouse home, the cage chandelier would grace the kitchen by hanging over the island or breakfast table. In mountain lodge style, you're more likely to find your cage chandelier in the family room, living room, great room, dining room or perhaps a large downstairs den or upstairs game room.
5. Fabric and Frosted Flush Light Covers
What about rooms that don't need statement lighting, but you still want to maintain that charming rustic feel? We suggest flush mount ceiling lights wrapped in fabric or frosted glass. Frosted, oiled, and rippled glass ceiling light fixtures have been a rustic favorite for longer than electric lights, and combined with lantern style frames and dark metal finishes, can look beautiful as part of indoor or outdoor mountain lodge home design.
Fabric light covers mix the delightful safety of electric lights with that homespun feel of rustic fixtures. Both fabric and frosted glass flush lights, favoring an industrial or farmhouse style, allow you to choose clear illumination and an efficient use of space in the room while extending your mountain lodge style in every room.
6. Soft Flicker Wall Sconces
If you miss the genuine flicker of candles and lantern flames in your rustic light fixtures, there are modern solutions. While flickering battery-powered tea lights have been popular for well over a decade (or four), modern smart light bulbs offer a more sophisticated way to blend that old-world charm with new-world safety precautions.
In fact, the perfect place to put your flickering bulbs is nestled into lantern-like wall lights. If there's one place where flickering candle lights look best, it's in a frosted or amber glass wall sconce where the human eye expects - deep down - to find a candle waiting for them to light the hallway.A faux candle on a table at the end of the hall might even fool a sleepy guest shuffling through your beautiful mountain-rustic home.
7. Subtle Farmhouse Style Ceiling Fans
What about ceiling fans? The ceiling fan is an essential part of home comfort and air quality, even if they're a little modern for a rustic design. Don't worry; Urban Ambiance has the answer for this little challenge as well. First, we love farmhouse-style ceiling fans, which put a cage or lit protective ring around the fan blades, so the shape of your fixture remains charmingly wrought while also providing added airflow.
We can even help you find the perfect rustic chandelier in which a fan is hidden behind swirls of artistic matte iron or polished bronze. The ceiling fan doesn't have to break your visual composition with the right ceiling fan chandelier.
8. Incorporating Rope and Wood Tones
Finally, don't be shy about incorporating more natural materials into your light fixture design like rope or wood tones. While less common than iron or bronze, rope and wood both make beautifully rustic light fixture materials in a time when LED bulbs give off almost no heat at all. Look for wood tones that match or compliment your exposed beams and other natural wood elements in the room design, while rope blends well in casual spaces and for indoor-outdoor lighting in the mountain lodge style.
At Urban Ambiance, we may have started with urban designs, but we know the tastes of homeowners don't always reflect their home's location. You can nestle a mountain lodge home into a lovely suburb or even onto the top of a skyscraper with enough exposed beams, mounted antlers, and farmhouse-industrial fixtures. Whether you are looking for a rustic statement chandelier for your great room or the perfect fabric-shaded flush lights for your bedrooms and hallways, you'll find everything you need through our online market.
Shop for yourself or contact us to learn more about the right light fixtures for your beautiful mountain lodge home design.
