Small Exterior Changes with Lanterns, Big Impact

It’s amazing what  a few small changes can do to impact the look of our home.

We replaced our front porch lights and back patio lights, and I can’t help but smile every time I walk by and see them.

Our mums are taking center stage in this picture, but I just love them. They are the ones that Marty’s mom gave us last year. I dug them up this past spring and stuck them in pots and kept them in a sunny spot on our back patio until they were in full bloom, then switched  places with the potted vincas that we moved to the patio (that will probably sadly die soon).

You see, the reason the new lights make me smile so much is our previous lights were uglier than ugly. The shape of the old porch light wasn’t bad, but it had dirty faded plastic and chipping spray paint. Not the most welcoming light (or sight) for visitors. In fact, it was so ugly, we tried to donate it to Habitat ReStore and they rejected it (we assume it was because of that, though they simply just left it behind after their pickup of some of our old kitchen cabinets). I kind of felt sorry for the rejected light.

Old Light

The new front porch light turns on automatically at dusk at 50% brightness, which I love. You can set it to turn off after 3 or 6 hours or run all night until dawn. It has a motion sensor, so if you walk in front of it, it goes to 100% brightness for 1 minute. We hardly ever turned our porch light on before because we always forgot to turn it back off at bedtime, so the auto on feature is so nice to have.

New Pretty Lantern Light

It goes nicely with our new front door  too. You can see one of our old lights still outside of our garage in this picture. We had some rain and lack of time to replace it, but this weekend it will be coming down and will be replaced with one just like our new one by the front door.

The back patio light was your standard basic light, but it was broken. This guy went straight to the trash.

Old Light:

The new patio light looks much nicer and was only about $30 from Lowe’s. We still grill out at night sometimes even though it is starting to get darker earlier, so it is especially nice not to juggle flashlights with a flaming grill anymore.

New pretty lantern light:

So much better than before.

While you’re here make sure to check out my paint color galleries and room galleries!

Linking up to: Fingerprints on the Fridge, Just a Girl, Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Green Door Designs, Boogieboard Cottage, Dittle Dattle, Keeping it Simple, Between Naps on the Porch, The DIY Show Off, The Girl Creative, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Home Stories A2Z, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, A Diamond in the Stuff, DIY by Design, Savvy Southern Style, Domestically Speaking,  Somewhat Simple, House of Hepworths, At the Picket Fence, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Remodelaholic