Let There Be Light(s)
Executive summary: When we purchased our condo, I jumped on the chance to replace a few ho-hum light fixtures as a way to add style without adding clutter. I’ve since continued to (more gradually) swap out lights as I look for further opportunities to upgrade and insert a point of view into my home’s design.
Fiat lux! That is the motto of my alma mater Berkeley, which means “let there be light.” What it doesn’t specify is what kinds of fixtures those lights should be shining from. Lights and lighting can make or break a room, and I relied on them in this condo to inject a dose of style when I otherwise had my hands tied in terms of what I could do (Stanford doesn’t allow a lot of changes to their faculty housing, even though we ostensibly own our place). As a minimalist, I also believe in putting the built-in features of a space to work (I count lights in that category). My thinking goes: if they’re going to be there anyway, I might as well get the more visually interesting version so that I don’t need to fill up the room with a million other things to decorate (and clutter) it.
When we bought our condo, the Stanford faculty housing office informed us what changes were allowed (or not) inside the unit. Paint, ok. Window treatments, ok. Light fixtures, kinda ok. Flooring, cabinets, counters, etc. off limits. One of the first things I did was pick out new light fixtures for three rooms, the three that for some reason Stanford explicitly said were fine to remove. Ahhh, our new fixtures were such a step up from the majorly meh plastic circle lights plastered to the ceiling before (Exhibit A)!
Exhibit A: New and improved light fixtures in the dining room, flex space, and second bedroom. Now it looks like someone (me) actually gave it some thought, which is so much of what design is, after all.
Source: CB2 (pendant light) | Crate & Barrel (semi-flush mounts)
Encouraged by this design success, I started wondering if we could swap out a few more of our lights, using the renter-friendly approach of storing the old fixtures and putting them back in someday if Stanford insists on them. In particular, the primary bedroom light and the hallway bathroom light were really bugging me. (I’m not a fan of the primary bathroom lights either, but they are lower priority/ less abrasive to my eyes.) As usual, I spent days obsessing over multiple ideas, including DIYing some sort of light fixture in the bedroom that would attach to the existing one and thus negate the need to remove it, but hubby said, “if you’re going to go through all that trouble, let’s just go for broke with a new fixture.” (Which we might be. Broke, that is, if we don’t stop putting more $$ into the condo.)
Ultimately, I took a trip to IKEA (my “adult Disneyland”) and walked away with the 20” Vindöga – a bamboo sphere light fixture – for the primary bedroom. A full-fledged chandelier would risk head-bonking, while a modest flush mount (like in the flex space and second bedroom) would be too small. I also didn’t want to get anything overly feminine (even though I love those kinds of pretty lights), as I anticipate that we’ll be moving my son into this bedroom sometime in the next several years, and we wouldn’t want to mar his adolescence by forcing a “girl light” on him. So a casual woven light seemed a reasonable compromise, plus it was on sale for $75, which was hard to resist. (West Elm retails a very similar “wicker globe pendant” for $399! What?!) The old light fixture was just so blah, being a white circle on a white ceiling in a white room, but the Vindöga subtly pops in this otherwise very neutral bedroom (Exhibit B).
Exhibit B: I don’t do a lot of before-and-afters, but they sure are fun to see! My husband says it looks like I used a virtual decorating app to change the picture. See if you can spot all the differences – I can identify at least three besides the light itself.*
Source: IKEA (pendant light)
Lastly, I present our bathrooms. Both have these tube lights that are too Art Deco or industrial for my taste. But boy, tube lights must be having a moment, because I see them everywhere at all the design-forward stores (e.g., Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, West Elm, etc). It’s easy to find expensive dupes for our lights (Exhibit C), which I think is hilarious, since I’m trying hard to get rid of ours. As they say, one (wo)man’s trash …
It’s striking how the fixtures and color scheme of the “designer” bathroom (on the left) and ours (on the right) are so close. You might think the former inspired the latter, but our bathroom probably actually came first, as this condo was built in 2017.
Exhibit C: I have no idea where Stanford sourced our bathroom tube lights from, but it’s easy to find very similar ones everywhere these days. I can’t believe how trendy (and pricey) they are, as I’m doing my best to replace them with something else!
Not wanting to drop hundreds more on light fixtures atm, I decided to leave the primary bathroom alone for now. But the hallway bathroom light is such an eyesore to me, I asked my MIL if she’d consider bundling this year’s birthday and Xmas gifts for hubby and me into a single nice light fixture. Voilà! Now we have this eye-catching sconce with a blue shade that speaks to the blue of our doors (Exhibit D). I know it’s unconventional to have a vanity light hang in front of the mirror, but we aren’t allowed to move the wiring in the wall or replace the mirror with a shorter one, and I liked this sconce so much that I decided it was worth taking a design risk (full post on the hallway bathroom updates here).
Exhibit D: This sconce makes a big statement in a small bathroom.
Source: Rejuvenation (wall sconce)
Might I revisit the primary bathroom tube lights one day? You betcha. I’ve already warned my MIL that I might save up our birthday and Xmas gifts again next year. Part of the reason I didn’t swap them out this time is that I haven’t found the perfect replacements yet. Too many tube lights dominating the market! Lol. I can take this one step at a time … which is a highly unusual sentiment for me, given my impatient nature, but we’ve done a lot this year with the move into the condo, and I think I’ve already pushed hubby to the limit of what he can handle design-wise. =P
* I wouldn’t want to leave you tossing and turning at night, wondering what all the differences are in the before-and-after picture, so here are the three I mentioned besides the bedroom light fixture: (1) the sunlight on the ground, (2) the angle of the rug/ picture, (3) the books under the clock on the nightstand. There, you can sleep soundly now.