6 Ways To Deal With Dark, Ugly, Tacky Apartment Lighting

In a perfect world, we’d all know how to rewire lamps and landlords would have moved past those terrible, 70s light fixtures. But I’m not yet an electrician and it’s probably wishful thinking to trust our landlords to make our design decisions.

Today, our girl Thalita is sharing ideas on how to make lighting a little less painful for all you renters out there. I know it can feel a little hopeless when you’re at the mercy of either poor lighting or terrible fixtures!

General Lighting

This is where we see the ever lovely “boob” lights. The absolute worst. Luckily, there are ways to cover them up!

First, you can make a drum shade which can easily be placed over the original fixture. No need to get too fancy here, you can use some simple embroidery hoops and a few hooks in the ceiling (perhaps even Command hooks if you’re blessed with flat ceilings and none of the yucky popcorn stuff!).

Bonus with these two options: they’re lightweight, they can be made at home, and they can be placed over an existing (perhaps ugly) fixture, so you don’t have to worry about uninstalling and re-installing any original lights!

Task Lighting

It’s important to have task lights, my friends, for obvious reasons: you need light for performing important tasks, such as eating ice cream in the middle of the night, so as not to spill any.

A useful, inexpensive and easy DIY option is to use a shelf bracket to attach a simple pendant light to, like this one.

Accent Lighting

Right? Pretty awesome.

Do you have bad lighting in your space? Share your best tricks for coping in the comments!

P.S. Storage in small spaces and living with tiny, galley kitchens

Sources: DIY Drum Shade // DIY Faux Capiz Shell Chandelier // DIY Pendant Lamp // Clip-on Task Lamp // String Lights on a Ladder //  DIY Marquee Light // Chen Mizrach // cc