Help me improve my new apartment's dismal lighting situation

September 16, 2013 10:58 AM

My recently purchased 1000 sq ft one bedroom apartment has terrible lighting, and I have no experience retrofitting lighting. What are the best resources for learning about lighting? Where can I buy decent light installations without breaking the bank? If I have a limited budget, what should be my priorities?

I just bought a 1000 sq ft one bedroom apartment in Chicago, and it needs some major help on the lighting front. I've tried searching for good guides about best strategies for interior space lighting, but everything I found was for super high end interior design.

I'm interested in combining track lighting with some centrally located lights for many of the rooms because in the past my apartments have always had just one light source in the center of the room leading to really really crappy light quality. I want to be able to change the lighting based on requirements (as opposed to just on/off).

What are the best resources for designing/thinking about lighting in my apartment?

What are the best places to buy lights? We have an IKEA close by, but I'm worried about buying from them because of proprietary bulbs and because of long term quality.

Do you have specific recommendations for track lighting? Is there a place where I can read/look up reviews of lights outside of Amazon?

One caveat; I won't use CFLs. I have in the past for energy purposes and have always been disappointed with quality of light and durability. With that in mind I'm totally on board with spending a bit more for LEDs, if only for their dimming ability.

posted by ghostpony to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

You don't mention much about your existing fixtures, but we just converted most of the recessed lights in our kitchen from a mix of standard incandescent floods and CFLs to LEDs. They make retrofit kits that slip inside the existing recessed cans and the results were very, very nice. You can pick them up at Lowes (or HD, I assume) for around $30 each.

There are also conversion kits to turn recessed lights into pendant lamps. We did this with a couple of the recessed cans over the work areas and then installed a track light over the kitchen table (to replace the existing chandelier-style lamp). We bought the same shades for the pendants as we did for the pendant/track light, so everything matches. Most of it was a cinch to do. The lone exceptions were a pair of cans that lacked some of the clips inside that the conversion kits expected. We had to...sort of...rig those. But everything is installed flush and it looks of a piece.

One thing we've noticed (and the product reviews mentioned it too) was that the LEDs have a noticeable delay before they come on. Like half-second to a second. Not even annoying, just sort of...there.

The go-to online resource around here for home decorating ideas is Houzz. Browse to Kitchens, and then Lighting and go nuts!
posted by jquinby at 11:14 AM on September 16, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'd also note that many LEDs are not dimmable. We got an LED fixture at Costco with the hopes of dimming it, but it doesn't turn-on unless the dimmer is full-up, and I'm guessing the dimming isn't doing any good to the driver circuitry, so I have to figure out how to do that differently.

And I too hate CFLs for their horrible half-life ("why is this room so dim? It didn't used to be this dim.") and lifespan way lower than advertised (and failure modes, "what's that burning plastic smell? Oh."), but have had much better luck with fixtures that mount the CFLs sideways rather than glass down.

Still have the problems with them getting dimmer sooner than they're supposed to, but they fail less often, and don't seem to burn holes in the bulb base and stink up the room when they do fail.
posted by straw at 11:33 AM on September 16, 2013

Home Depot and Lowes have good selections of decent quality lighting that will work and will not break the bank. I feel that Menards does not have even average quality lighting, but others may disagree.

Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and other catalog stores have nice lighting selections as well, and are very easy to browse online.
posted by lstanley at 11:34 AM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

IKEA really is the place to go for variety and affordability in lighting. As for proprietary bulbs, if that truly is an issue, I doubt IKEA is going anywhere in the lifetime of your apartment ownership.

Remember your paint choices help in the warmth and light arena. When faced with a similar issue, we liked Sherwin Williams' Navajo White for a neutral, FWIW.
posted by AnOrigamiLife at 11:40 AM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

A couple of these $25 IKEA paper lamps produce really nice, warm light. They're not bright, but they add nice light quality for not a lot of money. We've had one for two or three years that's been moved three times and is fine.
posted by cnc at 12:26 PM on September 16, 2013

If you are considering buying any type of overhead fan/light unit, IMHO it's worth going a step above Home Depot/Lowes. Those always get shaky and off-balance after a while and if the squeaking doesn't drive you mad, the broken lightbulbs will.
posted by radioamy at 12:28 PM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

Most Ikea lights don't use proprietary light bulbs, it is just that some of them used odd-sized lightbulbs and ikea happens to have all of them right there and can sell them to you as you walk by. They also help by giving them a name so they are easier to locate in the store.

Most of their pendant lamps use an E26 bulb which is a standard size bulb.
posted by magnetsphere at 12:31 PM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've had great luck with fixtures from big box hardware stores.

There are different types of lighting. Ambient, Task and Accent.

Ambient light is overhead fixtures. This is the light that keeps you from barking your shins on the coffee table.

You may also want lamps for reading, or under counter lights in the kitchen because this is where you do all that chopping and stuff. This is task lighting.

Then Accent lighting is that up light behind the ficus, or that light over the portrait of Great Uncle Jim.

I think that with a combination of ambient lighting on the ceiling and lamps for tasks, you may like the light in your apartment a LOT better.

I'm a huge fan of more light!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:54 PM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

Seconding magnetosphere: IKEA doesn't use proprietary bulbs or elements. Some are somewhat unusual in size, but hardware stores carry everything an IKEA light fixture needs, in my experience.
posted by yellowcandy at 1:06 PM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

LED home lighting is mostly not ready for prime time, with the exception of under-cabinet lights, where they seem ideal. My under-cabinet kitchen lights are halogen, and the heat can be an issue.

I mostly hate overhead lighting, though I have an overhead over the sink, and tracklights in the kitchen, tracklights in 1 bathroom, overhead light in the other. In the living room and bedrooms, I have torchieres, lamps, and clip-on lights on the bookcases.
posted by theora55 at 1:29 PM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

I would just get some nice lamps up in there, whatever suits your taste. Lamps always feel a lot more homey to me than overhead lighting, and of course the installation is a snap. If you don't want to have to walk around the room turning on lamps to get the place bright enough, you could get their outlets wired up to a switch or switches by the door. For a one-bedroom apartment, a few bright floor lamps and a smattering of smaller task/accent lamps would give you plenty of light and lots of options for different light levels to suit your mood. Plus, they're easy to move around if you want to reconfigure your lighting (say if you rearrange some furniture, for instance.) It's also probably going to be cheaper, quicker, and less disruptive than installing built-ins. That's how I'd go.
posted by Scientist at 2:43 PM on September 16, 2013 [2 favorites]