Cheap Lighting Ideas
Bucket full of stars. This cheap lighting idea takes less than 5 minutes to assemble! To get a soft upward glow with a makeshift lamp, find yourself a metal flower pot with a drainage opening. A cheap silver-colored pail will work well too, provided that it has a hole in the bottom. Find a short string of colored miniature Christmas lights, thread the cord through the hole, and bunch up the lights into a matted ball inside the bucket. The blend of hues from a string of multi-colored miniature lights is especially pleasing when gathered inside a metal container to serve as an uplight. It’s warm but not overpowering, and you can control the brightness by how many lights you use – 25, 50, and 100 can all work for small-to-medium metal buckets. A terra cotta pot would also work decently with white or amber lights.
Polish Cantina? When I was a kid, my grandmother used to tease my grandfather about his outdoor Christmas lights. Rather than use miniature lights, he opted for the gaily-colored large bulbs which usually come in strings alternating white, green, orange and blue. For some peculiar (and probably offensive) reason, my grandmother called them “Polish lights.” At any rate, these lights are bold and loud, demanding to be seen. The cantina idea is simple: just string these lights across the room or against a wall. Don’t hang them neatly; just drape them as you see fit. With some well-chosen accessories, you can have a room that looks like a southwestern cantina. I recommend trying this in the kitchen, where you can leave out some Corona bottles for effect!
Upside Down Lamp Action. Suspend a conventional lamp upside down from the ceiling? It sounds completely crazy, but I have seen this done successfully. A friend of mine found an extremely lightweight lamp base at a thrift store, and then he procured a simple lampshade that looked like a funnel when turned upside down. By using strong glue and some super-powered 3M adhesive strips (which admittedly can damage the ceiling) he affixed the inverted lamp to the plaster and ran the cord down a corner to an outlet. It became an instant conversation piece. The key to this lighting idea is finding a cheap lamp that weighs very little and a shade that will be attractive when inverted.
Fluorescent Fun. Foot-long fluorescent tube lights designed to be installed above kitchen sinks need not be affixed to the underside of a cabinet. Placed on the floor behind a couch or other wall-hugging furniture, these lights can make surprising ambient accents. Putting the otherwise annoying fluorescent fixture behind a piece of furniture makes the glow softer and easier on the eyes. If the light is protected by a rectangular piece of clear plastic, you can also wrap it in tinted cellophane for a cheap way to color the glow. Since the fixture will be hidden behind something (and probably on the floor), there’s no need to worry about appearance with this lighting idea.
Paper Lantern Lightpost. Whether hanging individually or in groups, these fixtures made of rice paper are inexpensive. You’re only paying for a cheap socket and cord along with a paper lantern that expands into a sphere or cube-like shape. In recent years, these lamps have been easy to find at discount retailers like Target and Wal-Mart and in the lighting section of Ikea. Color and size options are usually plentiful. If you find an old coat rack or coat stand with several hooks (3 is good), you can hang a paper lantern from each hook such that the lanterns bump against each other and bell out. The look is most successful with an upright coat stand (instead of a wall-mounted rack) because you can thread the paper lantern cords along the back of the stand’s upright rod to keep them out of view.
