How to Pick the Right Fixture Finish for Your Home

Takeaways:

• Your home is a place where you can explore a variety of different aesthetics, ensuring they work together cohesively.
• When it comes to your light fixtures, you can build your interior design around focal points like chandeliers or use them as accents.
• There are many finishes that can enhance your light fixtures and ensure they integrate seamlessly into your space, including metallic and colorful options.
• Finding the right finish will depend on your preferred design style, the existing decor in your space, and how impactful you want your lighting to be.

Types of Metal Finishes & More

Often overlooked, light fixtures are an integral part of creating a comprehensive interior design that matches your personality and preferred aesthetic. From your reading nook pendant lights to your hallway wall sconces, every fixture has character that can complete your decor. 

If you’re wondering how to make the biggest impact with your light fixtures, shades, bulbs, color cords, and hardware finishes are the key. In this blog, our experts at Color Cord Company will focus on choosing a finish for your light fixtures. Keep reading to learn more about the types of metal finishes, colorful accent options, brushed vs. polished textures, and how you can mix and match to ensure everything works together!

Define Your Style

Unless you’re still constructing your home, you likely already have a design perspective that’s prevalent in your space. Figure out what it is to define your style. Do you have a ton of muted colors and textures? You likely have a modern or minimalist style. Is each room drenched in color? You may be a maximalist. Some of the most popular aesthetics include:

• Coastal: Natural colors and textures that blend tailored accents with a casual feel. Color palettes range from pale green to blue with rattan, leather, wood, and linen accents.
• Midcentury Modern: Warm wood, chrome plumbing, and clean lines showcase how this style borrows from a few different eras, from the 1920s through the 1950s.
• Farmhouse: Industrial light fixtures, brick walls, and wood finishes prioritize natural colors and an elevated rustic feel.
• Industrial: Raw materials, like concrete and metal, take center stage. Allow rough finishes to be the focal point.

Other common interior design styles include Japandi, Boho, Rustic, Minimalist, and Mediterranean.

Match the Colors in Your Space

Each of these design styles features specific colors, so match your light fixture finish to the existing shades. You don’t want ultra-sleek steel light fixtures in a space that is all about vintage chic! The disconnect in styles can be jarring. While you can mix and match contrasting elements in boho and eclectic spaces, you should try to avoid clashing colors.

Popular Finish Options

Some of the most common types of metal finishes for light fixtures include:

• Matte Black: A bold shade that can stand out in pale spaces or blend in with dark ones, there’s a lot of flexibility with black finishes.
• Matte White: Lavish and opulent, matte white light fixtures show dust and dirt easily. Use them in areas you can reach to keep them clean and bright.
• Polished Chrome/Nickel: Dynamic and reflective, this type of metal finish is a cooler hue that works well in lighting for bathrooms or kitchens where the plumbing also features silver finishes.
• Bronze/Brass: Ideal in vintage spaces, bronze and brass finishes lend fixtures an old-world feel. Brass is also corrosion-resistant, making it a good choice in high-humidity environments.
• Copper: Like chrome, copper can also be polished to a reflective shine, but it exudes a sense of warmth. Unsealed copper fixtures will patina over time, adding a blue/green hue to the fixture.
• Gold: This type of metal finish feels soft and expensive. Add warmth and opulence to your space with polished fittings.
• Colorful: Metallic hues aren’t your only options! You can find colorful hardware for light fixtures to enliven any space with unique pops of color.

Metallic vs. Colorful

For interior design, nearly every metallic finish option is considered neutral enough to blend into your space without drawing attention. You’ll get a light fixture that reflects light in a way that will brighten up your space — even when it’s off.

Colorful light fixtures, like the Totally! Collection or the Handspun Collaboration, on the other hand, are designed to stand as a focal point in any room. They act as a design element upon which you build all other interior accents.

Brushed Metal vs. Polished

If you don’t want to use color to add interest to your space, texture is available for many types of metal finishes. Brushed metal vs. polished fixtures offer two very different results:

• Brushed Metal: Soft and muted, brushed metal is abraded to create directional lines on the fixture. It’s understated and warm, ideal for large spaces, absorbing light instead of reflecting it. These finishes are resistant to stains, spots, fingerprints, and smudges.
• Polished Metal: Mirror-like and glossy, polished metal is more glamorous and sleek. You can use these fixtures to make small spaces feel larger, expanding intimate bathrooms and powder rooms. Since these fixtures display water marks and smudges, wipe them down regularly to maintain their distinctive shine.

Matching Hardware

Should light fixtures match hardware? That depends on your style. We love the matching aesthetic for metallic finishes, but we feel more flexible with colorful fixtures. Mix and match hardware colors in the same fixture or contrast other hardware in your home with funky colors or ombre shades in your light fixtures.

Understanding Types of Metal Finishes

When you understand how different types of metal finishes affect your space, you can make better decisions for your interior design. We recommend checking out our gallery to see how each fixture's finish transforms the final look of every room. 

Shop by room to find the perfect fixture style and types of metal finishes today!