3 Light Fixture Hacks That Totally Transformed Our Rental

Changing light fixtures in our rental homes isn’t new for us. But when we swapped out almost all of them in our current home, we learned some very valuable hacks that not only improved our lighting situation but also how our rooms look and feel. The biggest lesson here: you’re not stuck with the fixture itself, the type of light, or even its placement. Here’s how to fix some common light problems we encounter in our rentals! 

Rental Lighting Reality

Early on in our rental life, it never occurred to me to swap out the light fixtures. Now, 20+ years and 12 homes later, changing light fixtures is one of my favorite things to do. 

Why?

Because it’s fairly easy (Greg is really good at it), it’s one of the few rental upgrades we can take with us when we move (as long as you keep the original ones to put back), and it can make a HUGE difference in how a room feels. 

In most cases, you simply do a one-for-one swap: remove the existing fixture, store it away, and put up a similar-ish one in its place.

• But what happens if the light is in a bad position for your furniture layout?
• What if there is no light where you want one?
• And what if you have a big ceiling fan instead of a (more manageable) light fixture?

You’re still not stuck. Here’s how to work around those constraints in a totally temporary, removable, renter-friendly way!

Hack 1 – Re-Centering a Light Over a Table

We’ve encountered this problem more times than we can count. In almost every home, the builder essentially decides where the table will go by placing the light fixture.

But what if the location isn’t where you want it? What if your table is too big or too small or the wrong shape for that spot? 

In our current home, the light fixture in our “formal” dining room was placed in the center of the room. Seems logical, right?

But when you consider doors, foot traffic and the rest of the room, the best place for a long, rectangle dining table is off center of the room. Which means the single fixture hangs over only one half of the table.

Super annoying.

Sure – we could have hung a ceiling hook centered above the table and “swagged” the fixture over. But the light itself was also a problem (it gave off way too little light for such a big room), so we decided to “kill two birds with one stone.”

I specifically shopped for a light fixture that still only had one hookup but had a long rectangular plate. This longer plate allowed us to center the fixture over the table, while still “reaching” the original hookup. 

Essentially, we hung the light as far to the left of the actual hookup as possible, while still covering it up.

Hack 2 – Replacing a Ceiling Fan with a Light Fixture

Our next lighting issue was the ceiling fan in our eat-in kitchen. It gave off so little light that we felt like we were eating in the dark.

Sure, I could have just swapped out the lightbulbs, but we already had this light fixture from our previous home.

Of course, I wanted to swap it out, but how on earth were we going to store this huge ceiling fan for the next few years?

It turns out that ceiling fans come apart! With just a few screws, we were able to take off the blades, which allowed us to put everything inside a box on a garage shelf. 

Much better, don’t you think?

(Yikes – that picture is showing me that the corner needs some serious art to balance out the room!)

Hack 3 – Turning Can Lights Into Pendant Lights

Finally, when we were first shown pictures of our new house, there appeared to be pendants over the kitchen island. 

So I…of course…ordered the matching pendant lights to our kitchen light fixture.

When we got into our house, there were no pendants hung; and we were told we were accidentally given pictures of a different house on our street.

Could I have just returned the pendants? Yes!

But a quick search on Amazon showed me that you can actually transform can lights to pendant lights with the help of this mechanism.

Now – a few disclaimers here.

For one, you can only use these converters in existing light hookups. You can’t install them on a blank, solid, powerless ceiling without an electrician. But if you have existing can lights, you CAN use this to put in a different fixture.

But proceed with caution – Greg is VERY good at swapping light fixtures and even this tested his patience. The converters were very difficult to install and were very precarious. 

But it was worth it because the added light and style from these glass pendants is very heart eyes only!

Dive Deeper Into This Project

Light fixtures come in a VERY wide range of prices. In this week’s Voice Notes, I’m sharing the few tricks I used to get our light fixtures at the lowest price possible!