Brass Swing Arm Lamp Makeover
How to change the look of bright brass on any item to look more like brushed brass without the need to use any chemicals or paint. It is a fast and easy DIY technique that can be done in 15 minutes.
Making over the brass swing arm lamps in my bedroom is one of my favorite types of projects… where I use a method that isn’t mainstream DIY, but one that works all the same.
I have been making over my bedroom and needed to update the bright brass wall-mounted lamps. They are bright polished brass swing-arm lamps – one on each side of the bed.
I like brass, but the polished brass on the lamps looked a bit dated. The latest brass trends are slightly brushed and are not so yellow. My lamps were in perfect working order, so instead of buying new, I transformed them and didn’t even have to pick up a paint brush.
All I did was use sandpaper to remove the polished look.
How to Update Polished Brass to Brushed Brass
The process to knock down the bright brass color is quite easy.
supplies needed: 100 grit sandpaper | Hand sanding block
- Rub sandpaper over the surface in one direction only. This is very important. You don’t just want to rub the sandpaper any which way – only in one direction so the scratch marks resemble a brushed metal finish. I used vertical strokes – long strokes on the flat parts and short strokes on the detailed areas.
- Keep the sandpaper flat and pressed hard so that it would leave long scratch marks in the surface of the brass.
- To get brush/scratch marks into the crevices, fold a small piece of sandpaper and run the fold up and down the crevices. Create new folds in the paper when doing this as the the sandpaper will wear out quickly.
- For the rounded areas, use a hand-sanding block and move it you are playing the violin around the arm and light bulb socket area.
Close up of brass finish – After and Before.
For the cost of a sheet of sandpaper and 15 minutes of my time, my brass swing-arm lamps are updated.
Bedroom Lighting Decorating Tip:
- Swing-arm lamps are perfect for bedtime reading since they don’t take up any space on your night table. You can move them around to get just the right light, no matter how you are sitting or lying on the bed.
Want to age brass with no brush marks? Check out this post on how to do it.
How to Hide the Cord on a Wall Mounted Lamp
My swing-arm lamps are not hardwired to the wall. They have a cord hanging down. I used the magic of photoshop to remove the cord from the image from the first image in this post since it looked like it was part of the shell.
If you have a similar wall mounted lamp with a cord hanging down and can’t hardwire it, then you can place a cord cover over it and paint it the same color as the wall.
This will lessen the look of the cord. Or on some higher end wall-mounted lights the cord covers are part of the design.
Most, but not all wall-mounted lamps come with cord covers. They are either a round metal tube or a square channel that mounts out of the bottom of the fixture.
Here is one in brass swing arm lamp cord cover, but they come in white and silver finishes also.
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