Ok, I think I'm going with centred over the night tables! I did some experimenting with bulbs and heights and should get enough light if they're in that location. Thanks everyone for your pictures! Beagles, the room I was thinking of painting blue is smallish, orthern exposure, very little light. Sigh. Oh well, the nice thing about being in the military is you get to move a lot! Maybe our next house will have a suitable room for blue? Cyn, thanks for the link! Annie, the lamps are going in the room you suggested usimg BM bone white as a trim color--I love it! Once the lamps, pictures & curtains are up, I'll be able to post pictures!

We recommend choosing the size of outdoor wall lights based on the height of the door that they will illuminate. It sounds like you want to use two lights, one on each side, so measure the height of the door in inches and then look for ones that are 1/4 the height of the door. Let's say your door is 7 feet high, or 84 inches high. 1/4 of 84 is 21, so your thought about 24" lights is on track (it's OK to go a little larger since these lights will also be viewed from afar). If you haven't chosen your lights yet, we can help you with that too! I filtered our selection of outdoor wall lights to show the ones that range from 21" to 24" tall. Let me know if you would like me to pick out some recommendations from our selection!

If you are putting cans in the ceiling over the front door DO NOT put them on the same switch as the porch light, sometimes you dont need to be light up like a christmas tree. but rather just have the porch light on for some ambiance when needed If the door is 8 ft, I would put the box about 10 inches out and 8 inches down. If it was my build I would put a stem hung warehouse shade then center a light to the open wall space and hang art or address sign under it. I really good idea for you would be go to home depo pick up a cheap light that is about the right size and hold it up to the door.. for placement

@annoulaxeni Thank you very much for your comments! I wanted to wait to reply until I had time to respond to your many points! Uplights: I love that idea. For a long time I've wanted tray lighting, and I was thinking about doing something at the base of the slopey part of our ceiling, like this: It would be down the line, but it's something I've been thinking about. > I see you have put in floor outlets and clearly on the artwork wall you have electrical supplies present, so why not move in, deal with the more significant pieces first, and by using flexible/moveable lighting for a bit, slowly progress toward confirming if you desire fixed wall lighting, and if so, where. I think this is what we will do. I believe everybody that the sconce placement is not the best, but since the builder won't move it anyway, this is a plan I can deal with. :) > I don't see the purpose of the second console. The primary purpose is to have a place to put drinks if you're sitting in the middle of the couch that isn't in the way if you want to stretch about. We're not only a TV family, but an eating-in-front-of-the-TV family, so it will be nice to have a place to put plates to keep them out of the way after we finish eating. (Since the ottoman will have our feet on it!) I've never had a big sectional before, so I'm just guessing here, but that's the motivation. > What do those gorgeous windows covering the one wall look out on? Right outside the windows is our back porch, which you can see a couple of pictures of here: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6146979/where-should-we-put-the-stairs-off-our-back-porch We also have a view of some trees, sky, and a few houses. The porch has a ceiling as high as the living room and we have can lights out there as well as a lighted ceiling fan. I'm not sure I entirely understand what you were getting at with your question there, but it sounded interesting and I would love to understand it! > Keep your major pieces ($$$) neutral, Add in your accents and the colors that will link various elements in the smaller, less-expensive pieces. This is what I'm going to try to do! Hopefully I am able to create the look I want. > A white sofa can be gorgeous. It WILL get dirty... Yes, for sure! We're going to get a Lovesac sectional where all the covers for seats/backs/cushions can be individually washed in the washing machine. The fabric we want ("coastal white weave") is recommended to line dry, so we may get one extra of each type so we always have a clean one to put on. I'm a little nervous to have a white couch, but browsing on Houzz it seems that people who want one usually find it to be worth the inconvenience of occasional washing. And having the covers be modular certainly minimizes the inconvenience. > Choosing paint to go with other elements is easy because there are a zillion colors so it can happen last. My plan is to leave the living room the neutral we've picked (SW Agreeable Gray) because of how open that area of the house is. If we changed the color in here, it would have to flow into a lot of other adjacent rooms. But we're okay with that, and I like this neutral a lot. I'm planning to put other colors in one or two other rooms later (that are not connected to the living room). > Same logic for choosing a plain carpet. If I can, I was going to try to find a rug that has 1-2 colors from the wall art in it. If I can't, I'll just get something neutral. I had read that indoor/outdoor rugs are much cheaper, and it seems Amazon has many large rug options that are relatively inexpensive (compared to a fancy real indoor rug), so I'm going to try that route first. We can't let the rug influence the couch color because we don't have many white options with Lovesac. One is a color I don't care for, another is pretty but in a fabric that apparently catches pet hair in a way that is hard to clean, and the others are microfibers and my husband can't stand to touch microfiber. So there's really only the one option for us, and we'll just have to find a rug somewhere that can work with that. I made my own Maria Killam undertone color wheel with Sherwin Williams paint samples (from the info at https://mariakillam.com/colourwheel/), so I'm hopeful that that will be enough to ensure I get a rug that is compatible. Fingers crossed. > And, finally, both in terms of color AND lighting, pay careful attention to the color temperature of all your lights! I have a feeling this is going to be an annoying thing to get right since we have high ceilings and can lights, but it drives me nuts when the lights in a room aren't the same color. So definitely I'm going to do this! Thank you very much for all your thoughtful comments!