A little series on Sypsie Designs highlighting few tips and tricks from seasoned and current renters.

This weeks tip is…

Change that lighting. No bowls allowed.

Is your rental full of those frosted glass bowl semi-flush mount ceiling lights like ours is? We can’t stand them and they’re usually only in homes because they’re either A) old and the landlord didn’t want to spend their dollars there to update them or B) really inexpensive so were put up to save those dollars.

However, we’re also not willing to switch out every. single. light. in. the. house. because as pretty as that is, that means we have to switch back every. single. light. in. the. house. when we leave. So, although we have switched out the lovely frosted bowl in the kitchen for a more modern track light, we wanted to work with them in other areas of our home.

This trick is especially perfect for people who are not allowed to switch out the lights due to their rental agreement or who are not comfortable playing with wires.

It’s also such a simple step, you’re going to laugh about how you haven’t done it earlier (we definitely did)! Let’s move into our office, shall we? mmmk.

The only thing needed for this project was a certain type of lamp shade. We needed the kind with the wires at the top and the “hole” small enough for a screw, not a bulb.

1. Unscrew the little white cap that’s holding on the plate/bowl/dish and remove the glass. That left us with the actual ceiling mount and the two light bulbs.
2. Hang the lamp shade, using the same little white cap.
3. Store the glass in a safe place to rehang when you move out.

… And then we were done.

If you’re not thrilled about seeing the light bulbs every time you walk under the shade, there are some really cool ways to add a metal grate or design to the bottom of the drum to hide them, but we left ours open as it doesn’t bug us.

;

And that’s how we went from old glass bowls to updated shades in about 30 seconds.

What do you think? Would you do this in your rental? We love how quick it took the room from dated to modern and how easy it will be to change back once we leave : )

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