This summer I am planning some projects for my house's exterior here in San Diego. First, we have to have the balcony above our garage rebuilt and resurfaced due to a leak. While we're at it, I'd like to replace the vinyl railing with a wrought iron one to compliment our semi-mediterranean style exterior. Then I'd like to do new exterior paint and light fixtures, and change the placement of the fixtures. The fixture to the left of the door on the front of the house has an external wire and looks terrible and I want to get rid of it since we never use it anyway. I'm trying to decide what to do with the rest of the fixtures. For the paint, I'm thinking a medium beige color with white trim. A new front door will probably come later, I'm thinking maybe in a rusty red color. Here are two current pictures.

I have two questions:

1. For the wrought iron railing and new light fixtures, should I go with black or more of a dark brown/bronze look?

2. After taking out the light fixture on the left side, should I add a new one on the other side of the garage to make those 2 symmetrical? Or maybe I could just get rid of the one by the garage and only keep the one by the front door, since that's the only one we use every night?

There are also 2 fixtures on the balcony I'll need to replace, but we rarely turn those on, since we rarely use the balcony. It seems like 5 lights on the front of this house is unnecessary. Most of our neighbors have only 1. By the way, there is a motion detecting light on the right side by the gate.

Opinions?