If you’ve been looking for a way to freshen up the light fittings around your home, the creative folks over at The Lighting Channel have some simple DIY tips to help you. Their video, 10 Ways To Change A Light Bulb shows you how you can create distinctive light shades with just a bottle, bowl, or a piece of paper.
The video below shows you the 10 innovative fittings they have created with just a little DIY know-how. They have further instructional videos which show you how to create each of the shades in detail.
If you have a go at any of these, particularly the paper-based ones, make sure to use LED light bulbs, as they don’t get nearly as hot as incandescent light bulbs. If you’re unsure of how to wire a light, our guide may help, but you need to make sure you can confidently complete it from start to finish. If not, for your own safety, it’s best to get a qualified electrician to do the job.
Possibly the easiest but one of the most effective options is a simple paper light. “Just wrap a sheet of paper around the light bulb for our simplest solution,” they say. “Then get creative with your choice of paper. It’s such a simple lamp there isn’t much to explain. But it looks pretty!”
The bowl light would be a good choice for modern spaces, such as kitchens that feature a lot of chrome.
For this lamp we used a common film lighting trick, bouncing a bright light off the ceiling, to evenly increase the light in the room without creating a dominating source. You can still shape the space with additional focused lights, but the bowl light fills in the the shadows a little and makes the room overall brighter.
Our favourite is the soft-box light, as it’s such a simple solution but provides a really professional finish.
Borrowing from our film background, the soft-box is a standard lighting fixture for portraits or product photography, who knew you could also build one out of a flowerpot?! Put this one over your dining room table and every meal looks like it’s out of a magazine.
Check out the The Lighting Channel and let us know if you have a go at any of these. We would love to see pictures of the finished product.
READ MORE: Here’s 5 easy ways you can use lighting to improve your home.