A pleasing way to compliment a family room is to place sconces near a fireplace. If you are going to do this, it is important that you adhere to a couple of simple rules that will ensure that your placement doesn’t create an unaesthetic appearance within your home. Fireplace sconces need to be placed properly in order to prevent the room from appearing as if it is on fire, specially if you are using candles in the sconces as your light source.
If you plan on decorating a fireplace with wall sconces, make sure to use two as a single or odd number of sconces cannot be evenly geometrically placed around a fireplace without placing one directly above the midpoint of the fireplace. The idea behind using wall sconces to decorate a fireplace is to accent the fireplace. If you have ever tried to decorate a fireplace using a single fireplace wall sconce placed directly above the fire, you would see that it gives the appearance that your room has suddenly caught fire. This is not a look that anyone wants in their home. Fires are generally lit in rooms where the family lounges and spends the largest amount of time gathering. You want to create a feeling of comfort and warmth in a room like this, not one that feeds feelings of anxiety and makes you look over your shoulder every half hour because you have strange feelings that your house is on fire.
A simple look at Google Images with the search term ‘fireplace sconces’ shows that just about everyone who uses sconces over a fireplace puts them at an equal distance outside the width of the fireplace itself. When all three fires are going, it creates an upside down triangle with the greatest amount of light coming from the focal point of the room — the cozy fireplace.
Another thing you want to pay attention to when buying your fireplace wall sconces is that you want the materials or colors to match with both the walls of the room as well as the framing of the fireplace. Whether you do this only using the materials of the fireplace sconce or by using the candles or lighting element of the sconce is a matter of personal preferance, but know that if the sconce and light source within it are all a single color, it may serve to break up the harmoneous effect that having all three of your pieces work together would otherwise bring. Remember, you should be using your wall sconces to accent the fireplace, not the other way around.
If you pay attention to these rules when picking out fireplace sconces and placing them in your family room, you will create a warm, welcoming environment for you and your family to enjoy for years to come.