If you don't buy the Chinese made house brand crap from either one of the big boxes, then you may be OK. You can still save some money on some national brands that are good quality. However, once you throw out the Chinese junk, the selection goes way down and you may not find the look you're going for. On something that's 12' up in a foyer that I have to wrestle to get out the scaffolding just to change a bulb on, I want the best quality possible as I don't want to have to involve myself in a difficult or expensive replacement. For a kids room whose tastes will change overnight, something of a lesser quality may be in order. But, for the ones that are going to be there for the life of the home (like recessed lighting) I don't want to have to budget twice because I cheaped out the first time.

The problem with the acorn light is that is is shown in the context of barn lights. The website decor is hard to ignore. Imagine it in the context of a 1940s-50s kitchen. Then with Beekeeper's kitchen. Then with a mod New York apartment kitchen. Then with a craftsman kitchen. Then with.... There are a lot of kitchens that would enjoy this light.

I recommend LED wall packs and LED flood lights, which are very energy efficient and make the outdoors very bright and full of fun. I used it two years ago. These two types of lighting effects are good for outdoor lighting.

Update: I was wrong about our house windows. They are not TDL but FDL (full divided light), which for Andersen windows means interior and exterior permanent grilles, with an aluminum spacer bar between the glass. This seems to be the same thing as Simpson SDL. Any reason not to buy 3/4 light wood doors from Simpson that are SDL? The only other thing I've learned is that with a Simpson SDL door, if glass breaks, it may be cost-prohibitive to replace the glass, and necessary to replace the whole door. With TDL, an individual broken light can be replaced. Any thoughts on which doors will look better, and what makes the most sense? Attached are photos that show what the TDL and SDL lights look like in the Simpson doors. The light with the dark framing is the TDL and the one with the aluminum piece between the glass is the SDL.