A short history of the wall sconce

A wall sconce is a light fixed to a wall, usually with a backplate and one or more arms or a shade. It began as a holder for candles, often with a polished metal or mirrored back to reflect their light. Over the following centuries it was adapted for gas, then electricity, and in the 1920s and 1930s it became the Art Deco uplighter. Today it is one of the most useful lights in a home.

The word itself hints at its origins. "Sconce" comes through Old French from the medieval Latin absconsa, meaning a hidden or covered light: a lantern shielded from the wind. In English it came to mean a bracket candlestick fixed to a wall.

Candle sconces

Before gas, a room after dark depended on firelight and candles. Candles were expensive, especially good beeswax ones, so every scrap of their light mattered. A wall sconce lifted the flame to a useful height, kept it away from tables and fabrics, and, most importantly, put a reflective surface behind it.

By the late seventeenth century, wealthy English houses had sconces with backplates of polished brass or silver, often embossed with shells, scrolls and leaves. The shining plate doubled the light and turned the fitting into an ornament in its own right.

As mirror glass became more available, it replaced polished metal. Mirrored sconces were set into carved and gilded frames, and in the eighteenth century the girandole became fashionable: a decorative wall mirror, often elaborately carved in giltwood, with candle arms fixed to its base. Thomas Chippendale published designs for them in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director of 1754.

The first wall lights were as much about reflection as flame. Their job was to make a little light go a long way.

In grand rooms, sconces were placed between windows and on either side of chimneypieces, in symmetrical pairs. That habit of pairing still shapes how we hang wall lights today.

Gas brackets

Gas lighting arrived in Britain in the early nineteenth century. Pall Mall in London was lit by gas in 1807, and through the Victorian period gas spread into ordinary homes in towns and cities. Indoors, the wall sconce became the gas bracket: a fixed or swivelling pipe arm, often in brass, ending in a burner and glass shade.

Gas gave far more light than candles but brought heat, fumes and soot. It is one reason Victorian ceilings had plaster ceiling roses: they helped disguise the marks of rising soot around the central light. Our history of the Victorian ceiling rose tells that story. Late in the century, the incandescent gas mantle made gas light whiter and brighter.

Electric light

Joseph Swan in England and Thomas Edison in America developed practical incandescent bulbs around 1879 and 1880. Cragside in Northumberland, the home of Lord Armstrong, was among the first houses in the world lit by electricity, and it is now looked after by the National Trust. In London, the Savoy Theatre was lit by electricity when it opened in 1881.

Early electric wall lights often copied gas brackets, simply swapping the burner for a bulb. But electricity needed no air supply and made no smoke, so the bulb could point in any direction and sit inside any shade. Designers soon took advantage.

Art Deco uplighters

The 1920s and 1930s produced the wall light most people still picture: the Art Deco uplighter. A half-bowl, fan, shell or stepped shape, made in frosted glass, alabaster, metal or plaster, sat flat against the wall and threw light upwards onto the ceiling. The room was lit by soft, reflected light rather than a bare bulb.

• Fans and shells. Half-sunburst shapes that echoed Deco doorways and gates.
• Stepped forms. Ziggurat profiles borrowed from skyscrapers.
• Plain bowls. Simple, smooth uplighters for hallways, stairwells and cinema foyers.

Cinemas, hotels and liners of the period used them in long rows. You can see the style in its glamorous form in the 1930s interiors of Eltham Palace in south-east London. Our guide to what is Art Deco covers its wider vocabulary.

Modern plaster sconces

After decades in which a single ceiling pendant did most of the work, wall lights have returned. They create layered light, make small rooms feel larger and light walls rather than floors. Plaster is a natural material for them: it diffuses light softly, takes paint, and suits the sculptural, shell and stepped shapes that the Deco designers loved.

As a designer, I find it satisfying that a modern plaster sconce does the same job as its seventeenth-century ancestor. It bounces light off a surface to make the room glow.

Choosing and fitting a wall light today

Our plaster wall lights are hand-cast to order in Shrewsbury, arrive as natural plaster and can be painted with ordinary emulsion. Each comes as shade only, as a battery LED version with a remote, or UK mains hardwired. The battery version needs no wiring at all. Hardwired lights must be installed by a qualified electrician; in England and Wales, notifiable electrical work comes under Part P of the Building Regulations. See our fitting instructions, or browse the full wall lights collection.