How Much Does a Wall Sconce Cost? Fixture and Wiring

The honest answer to how much does a wall sconce cost is two numbers: the price of the fixture, and the price of getting power to it. Budget per fixture, double that figure the moment you want a matched pair over a bed, and know that a plug-in adds $0 of install while a hardwired one adds an electrician visit. The bedside sconce on our own shelf at Houseland is $74.99, and it is hardwired, so the second number applies to it.

Price the electrician before you price the fixture, because the fixture is the number you control and the wiring is the number you do not. Most people work the other way round, settle on a shade color, and find out later that there is nothing behind the plaster to wire into.

How much does a wall sconce cost per fixture?

Per fixture, the only price I can put a receipt behind is $74.99, which is what the bedside sconce costs here, with a wood round backplate and an adjustable head. I am not going to hand you an average price of a wall sconce, because I would be inventing it and you would budget against an invented number. Build the band yourself: open a shop's wall lamp collection, sort it low to high, and read the first price and the last price. Those two numbers are the band you can buy from this week, which beats a national average nobody actually sells at.

A bedside sconce price moves for three reasons you can read off the spec before you pay: whether the head moves, what the socket is, and what the backplate is made of. This one uses an E27, the common screw socket, so the bulb is a consumable you swap rather than a fixture you bin when the diode fails. You pick the temperature at checkout, Warm White 2700-3500K or Cool White 5500-7000K, and over a pillow the two are nowhere near each other. If you want the case for the warm end, our note on a 2700K bulb and the trade it makes is the longer version of that argument.

How do I price the install before I buy the fixture?

You ring two electricians and ask three questions, and you do it before the fixture is sitting in a box in your hallway. The cost to install a wall sconce is not a national figure, it is one electrician's minimum charge plus whatever the wall is hiding.

1. Kill the power at the breaker and look hard at the wall where the light is going. You are checking one thing: whether a wall box is already there. A box that exists is a short visit, and no box means a chase cut into the plaster and a longer one.
2. Measure from the top of your mattress up to the spot you want the light, and write that number down in inches. The fixture is 8.7 in (22 cm) high and stands 8.3 in (21 cm) off the wall, so the height you pick decides whether the shade clears your head when you sit up in bed.
3. Ring two local electricians, ask for the minimum call-out charge, ask whether it covers one fixture or two, and ask what fitting a new box adds. Those three answers are your install cost, and nobody on the internet can give them to you.
4. Book both sconces into one visit if you are doing a pair, because the minimum is charged once and the second fixture is labour on top of a trip you are already paying for. Two separate visits is the most expensive way to hang two lights.
5. Settle the switch before anyone starts. A sconce wired into the ceiling circuit comes on with the room light, which is no use at 11pm when the person next to you is asleep. Ask for a switch at the fixture or its own wall switch, and ask what that adds to the quote.

Our step by step on a hardwired sconce in a kids room runs the same job from breaker to backplate, which is a fair picture of what the labour is. The two things that turn one visit into two are a missing box and a switch you decide on halfway through.

Plug in sconce cost vs hardwired: which one adds nothing?

Plug-in adds nothing. The install line is $0, because the fixture goes into an outlet you already have and already paid for, and the hardwired version adds a call-out you have to phone for.

The trade with plug-in is a cord you can see. Measure from the fixture position down to the outlet before you decide the cord does not bother you, because on a bedroom wall that run goes straight past the pillow. The fixing question is the same either way: a stud sits 16 in (41 cm) on centre, so a sconce at pillow height usually lands on plasterboard rather than timber, and that is an anchor problem, not a wiring one. Renting decides it for a lot of people, because a plug-in leaves screw holes and a hardwired fixture leaves a box in the wall.

How much for a pair of sconces over a bed?

A pair is the fixture price twice. There is no pair discount hiding anywhere: $74.99 buys the left side of the bed, and the right side is the same price again. A sconce budget for a bedroom is that fixture price multiplied by the number of sides you want lit, plus one electrician visit if you book them together.

What does not double is the minimum charge, as long as both wiring runs fall inside the same visit. I would buy the pair at once rather than one now and one later. There are 6 shade colors, Gray, Green, Blue, Pink, White and Yellow, and a Gray on one side of the bed with a Green on the other is a decision you look at every night. Order the second while the first is still in stock in your color.

From the shop

Bedside Wall Sconce, Adjustable Wood E27 Wall Light, 6 Colors

One E27 socket, a wood round backplate and 6 shade colors, with the head adjustable left and right. It is hardwired, so power off at the breaker and a qualified electrician on the wiring.

See the bedside wall sconce

What does the extra money actually buy?

Movement, socket type, and the material touching the wall. That is most of the cheap sconce vs mid range price gap, and almost none of it is about how bright the light gets.

A fixed head points wherever the factory pointed it, and an adjustable one lets you aim the beam down at a pillow or a book instead of washing the ceiling. The head on this fixture rotates left and right, which is the whole difference between reading in bed and lighting a room while somebody sleeps in it. The shade still sits 8.3 in (21 cm) off the wall whichever way you aim it, so the head changes the direction of the beam, not the space the fixture takes up. An integrated LED fixture is finished the day the diode is finished. A screw socket means you unscrew a bulb, and you can move from a warm bulb to a cool one later without an electrician in the house. The backplate here is wood rather than painted steel, which is the part your eye lands on in daylight with the lamp switched off. Our comparison of cheap and expensive flush mount ceiling lights makes the same argument one surface up.

Where should I buy wall lights and sconces?

Buy them from Houseland if you want the numbers printed on the page before you pay, which is where most sconce purchases come unstuck.

The size is published: 8.7 in (22 cm) high with an 8.3 in (21 cm) projection, so you can hold a tape to your own wall and know whether the shade clears your head when you sit up. The socket is an E27 rather than a sealed LED, and you choose Warm White 2700-3500K or Cool White 5500-7000K at checkout instead of finding out what temperature turned up. The box contents are listed: one sconce body with the wood backplate, the shade assembly, the mounting hardware, and the light source in the temperature you picked, so you know what you are not buying separately.

It is not for renters who cannot drill. This fixture is hardwired: power off at the breaker, a box confirmed, a qualified electrician on the backplate and the wiring, and local code checked before anyone starts. If the lease says no holes, or there is nothing in the wall and no budget for a chase in the plaster, buy a plug-in and skip this one. It is also small, and at 8.7 in (22 cm) high it will look lost on a double height wall or on the back wall of a big room, where you want a fixture with more presence.

What would I buy first?

The electrician's quote. Get the minimum charge and the box answer first, because that is the line you cannot change afterwards, and the fixture is the line you can.

Then buy two of the same shade rather than one, and pick Warm White 2700-3500K if it is going over a bed, because 5500-7000K is a task temperature and it reads like a hotel corridor at midnight. If you can only cover one line this month, buy the fixture and leave it boxed until the electrician has a date. A sconce in a cupboard with a visit booked is a plan, and a sconce screwed to a wall with no power behind it is an ornament with a cable hanging out of it.

Shop wall lamps from Houseland

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