How to Light a Room without a Ceiling Light Fixture

For some baffling reason, two bedrooms in my house do not have wiring for ceiling lights. I’m not sure why the builder though that some folks in a house doesn’t deserve overhead lighting like the main bedroom but here we are.

I originally solved our room lighting issue with placing four halogen desk lights on top of the bookshelves that line the wall in our office. This worked well for years until it didn’t. The light bulbs started to burn out more frequently. Replacement light bulbs seemed to burn less brightly (I used the same wattage) and even more puzzling, a random light would blink one day and be fine the next.

 

Overhead office lights BEFORE

My first thought is the blinking might be caused by some sort of horrible monster/alien/bad guy from another dimension trying to sweet talk us into opening a portal to our universe to start all sorts of trouble that I personally don’t have time to stop from taking over the world since etiquette dictates you need to stop the monster and send them home if you are the one who invited them  into your dimension.

Or the more likely (and boring) answer is that there is a short in the wiring in one or more of the lamps.

Either way I need to upgrade the current set of lights with either a row of new desk lamps on the bookshelves or having an electrician wire the room for a ceiling light. I kept both options in mind when I shopped for overhead lights.

The only requirement for either type of light is that it doesn’t use integrated light bulbs I can’t change when they eventually burn out. I don’t want to be in a position years down the road of tossing a perfectly good light fixture when all it needs is a new light bulb. Talk about wasteful and possibly expensive planned obsolesce!

A quite a bit of window shopping (I'm a lighting geek) and few mouse clicks later, I upgraded our office lighting with a conspiracy of these raven desk lamps.  (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links for your convenience.)

 A flock of ravens is called a conspiracy or an unkindness. A flock of crows is called a murder.

 

Every room in our house has at least one electrical outlet connected to a light switch on the wall, our office included. I plugged a heavy duty extension cord into that wall outlet behind the bookshelves and into a power strip I attached to the top of the center bookshelf. 

Yeah, I know. I didn't style the bookshelves Pinterest Perfect.That would require getting rid of books, which isn't happening anytime soon.

Each raven took flight and claimed a bookshelf in a tidy row (no one likes an unkempt unkindness) and plugged their lamp into the power strip that I can now turn on and off with the wall switch just like I would with a hardwired overhead ceiling light.

 

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