Holiday Switch

Legrand challenged me to join its “DIY Holiday Switch” program to demonstrate how easy it is to switch out the wall plates of our light switches, and create custom designs to suit our own holiday style. It’s no secret that I really like the adorne by Legrand products that I’ve installed throughout my house, and I accepted their offer so you could further see how customizable these pieces can be. Legrand provided me three wall plates to fit my existing system, but the execution is my own.

For a chance at f-r-e-e money: Legrand is running a holiday Pinterest contest, where users who create a holiday design Pinterest board could win up to $500 towards adorne products. Participate if you’re interested – get instructions and submit your boards right here by this Friday to be entered!

Tree, check. Lights hung outside, yes. Last Christmas, I had just barely unpacked when I had a baby, so this year is the first in this house that I’ve felt motivated to devote energy into our holiday decorations. It’s very merry with our $35 tree from The Home Depot, our mantle and shelves are decorated with handmade projects and seasonally appropriate kid art, and it smells really great thanks to some light bulb oil infusers that I was gifted a few years ago. Would it be wrong for my house to smell like pine year-round? Can’t make up my mind.

If you’ve followed me through previous holiday seasons, you’ll remember that I’ve never been one to adopt a theme for our tree or our home – it’s always a hodge-podge of colors and memorable ornaments, and this still feels right for us – but we’ve been evolving and naturally gravitating towards a more mid-century and Scandinavian-spirited style, so adding bits and pieces of that aesthetic as it works is where our mind is at right now. I’m no designer, and I’m sure I’ll have this down pat in another 10 years or so, but what I do for now is devour learnings from people who do it really well… like pinning everything Christmas from The House that Lars Built while I eat anise cookies by my unlit-but-birch-wood-accessorized fireplace. Scandinavian hipster, question mark?

I wouldn’t have thought myself to swap out my wall plates as part of a seasonal transition, but I do like how something typically overlooked can easily be modified to tie into a holiday or event. I also really like how easy it is to change the look of a room by upgrading switches and the color of a wall plate… the adorne line makes both totally easy, and I like their products a lot because it’s a very modern look within reach for your average consumer and home enthusiast. There is no denying that the push buttons and toggles are more fun to look at than ordinary switches, and the wall plates just the same. That’s why I continue to collaborate with them – you would like them.

We have three groups of switches in our main living/dining area, so they sent me three new wall plates to play with.

The plates come with a plastic sheet–glossy white on one side, matte ivory on the other–which theoretically you could decorate yourself and then stick into place on the wall plate. The alternative to that is to use the sheet as a stiff template for cutting other materials for a custom wall plate like I did here and here.

This time I chose to use a sheet of paper that emanated some holiday cheer. The paper itself from a black and white coloring book I bought at Anthropologie years ago (throwback to 2011: you might remember seeing it when I made this paper lampshade). I used the templates to trim the paper to size using an X-Acto knife for precision, and then peeled back the yellow strips to reveal an adhesive area.

You might be wondering how easy it is to peel up your design once it’s attached? It’s possible. I messed up alignment with each of the three products this time, oof. Fortunately, even with a little residue from the paper left behind, it was still plenty sticky. Worse comes to worse, you could probably use adhesive spray on the back of your custom template, and then attach it to the wall plate directly for a clean transfer.

I briefly considered using a vintage holiday card trimmed to size during all of this, which is why one is shown in the photo below. Still a good idea depending on the size of your wall plates (my cards are big enough for the 1- and 2-gang wall plates, but not wide enough for the 4-gang set of switches that we have, so I threw out that idea pretty quickly.

I also considered overlaying little red pine details to the black and white graphic, which I still believe would have looked pretty nice.

When it comes time to swap on the new cover for your wall plate, you’ll have to pop off the existing cover. An ordinary flat head screwdriver is perfect for this – just wedge it in between a metal tab and the cover (an obvious area on the product, no you won’t damage your drywall) – and pop it loose.

The new wall plate snaps right onto the existing system, no issues.

I’ve voiced concerns about the paper surface getting dirty more quickly if it were being touched a lot, but based on how the cover in the nursery still looks over a year later, I wouldn’t say it’s much of an issue at all. Apparently, I don’t touch the wall plate, I only poke at the switch.

The design isn’t literally something scandinavian, but it’s eclectic and enjoyable throughout our home at this time of year (and because it’s not screaming Christmas, we could probably get away with leaving them installed into the spring)!

Don’t forget – for a chance at f-r-e-e money, enter Legrand’s holiday Pinterest contest where users who create a holiday design Pinterest board could win up to $500 towards adorne products. Participate if you’re interested – get instructions and submit your boards right here by this Friday to be entered!