One of those moments when you turn the lights on and are immediately met with disappointment? Yeah, me too. Well, that was my bathroom for three years.
I’d stumble into the bathroom each morning, glare at myself in the dark mirror with bad overhead lighting that cast shadows under my eyes, and curse myself all day long for why everything looked so different under other people’s makeup whenever I came face-to-face with another mirror. I kept telling myself that I would “figure out the lighting situation eventually,” one of those silly things you say to yourself that you never actually get around to. Until my sister came to visit last autumn and bluntly told me my bathroom resembled “the vampire lair of tweezers snapping.” Ouch.
But also not exaggerating one bit. Honestly, I thought I knew lighting.
I’d poured DAYS into pouring over pendant lights online and having lofty debates with my husband about whether warm white or daylight bulbs were better suited for hanging over our dining table.
But when it came to bathroom lighting, I lazily assumed one overhead light would suffice. Friend, I was so wrong. Thankfully, a cold January morning snapped me out of my complacency.
I was furiously tweezing my eyebrows one freezing Saturday morning. Tweezing your eyebrows, friends, is one of those activities where you need ACTUAL LIGHT to see what you’re doing. Something about seeing that, in order to tweedle your eyebrows properly with the tiny little holes you have between your eyebrows and your eyelids, I was literally doing a downward dog to see my face properly.
It was time for a change. Figure out lighting took some digging, but tbh I should’ve known better. There’s vanitory lighting, ambient lighting, task lighting, accent lighting.
Basically four types of lighting you can (and should) layer into your space. If you want a deep dive into bathroom lighting, click here for the full dork-down. But I’ll sum it up: Vanity lights = the light you actually see yourself in when you get ready.
Ambient lighting = overall mood light. Task lighting = maybe over your sink? And accent lights are exactly that: To accent parts of your bathroom you want to highlight.
For vanity lighting, I opted for two….wait for it…. VANITY lights. Vanity lights are things you can mount on each side of the mirror and they diffuse light across your whole face, rather than creating that crazy eyeline shadow you get from a single overhead bulb.
I went with basic, hourglass-shaped fixtures with frosted glass shades. Nothing too fancy. The bulbs are actually important here!
Make sure you get something bright with a warm (or natural) light temperature. These bulbs range from zero to 100 degrees, with 60 being the typical happy place. Bulbs with lower numbers like 2700K give off a warm/winte.
These puppies HAD to be installed by a professional. I’ll be upfront: Electrical work is not a DIY project. At least, it shouldn’t be unless you know what you’re doing.
And I didn’t. So I called my local electrician, friend, and spent 45 minutes dramatically describing where I wanted things mounted, chicken wiring the cords would need to reach, etc. Bless him for listening to me ramble on.
After a thorough consultation with Mr. Electric, we decided to install the fixtures about 60 inches from the ground, putting them right at eye level when I’m standing at the sink. ? The difference these vanity lights have made is night and day.
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Literally. I can actually SEE myself when I’m putting on makeup now. Instead of feeling like I have to tilt my head back at weird angles to see what I’m doing, I can actually apply concealer with ease.
What other simple bathroom update can make checking if you missed a spot shaving feel like SUCH an experience? Alright, vanity lighting was a great start. But frankly, my bathroom still looked like a weird clinical cave when I took baths at night or got up to pee in the middle of the night.
SO! Bring in ambient lighting. aka softer, moodier light. I installed this light kit on my bathroom mirror that clips on with a set of LED lights behind it.
The glow it gives off when lit is TO DIE FOR. It creates this soft ambient backlighting that just makes your bathroom feel – you guessed it – less like a cave. Another quick win was swapping out my current ceiling light for a dimmer switch.
Holy heck. Being able to turn the overhead light down when all I’m doing is washing my face or taking a bath at night is clutch. I never realised how dark my bathroom felt with only the overhead light on; adding a dimmer switched allowed me to not ONLY gauge how much light I wanted, but it also made my light fixture a focal point instead of an afterthought. (P.S. you don’t need to install new light fixtures to do this.
You can easily replace the light switch that already exists.) FINALLY, accent lights. I’ll be honest, these felt extra at first. But then I stumbled upon THESE bad boys.
Battery-operated LED puck lights that I stuck underneath my floating cabinet I keep my towels on. They stick on with velcro (!!!) and are motion-activated, so they just give off enough light when I get up in the middle of the night to stumble to the bathroom without blasting me with full brightness. My husband is literally intoxicated by these lights.
Before him and I were married, he would always sleep in hotel bathroom bathrooms with ZERO lighting because he didn’t want to wake me up. Now? He’s a glowing (literally) evangelist for the accent light game.
Finally, I maximised natural light. No lighting trick is better than natural sunlight. Our bathroom only has one small window that I always kept covered with a dark grey roman shade.
I switched out that bad boy for a simple white sheer CELLULAR SHADE that lets in tons of natural light during the day without compromising privacy. (Pro tip: Bright white paint reflects natural light 75% better than darker colours.) Speaking of colours… While I was having my batt Doesn’t natural light just make everything ten times better? Now I can actually see the true colour of everything I’m washing under the sink AND bask in the glow of natural sunlight during my morning makeup routine.
I painted my vanity WHITE.
I never thought I would be into all white bathroom vanities, but GIRL BLIND PANGED when I saw Kelly Paint’s soft white paint in person. Deep grey was “popular” when we installed our countertops but it sucked up all of the light. Now, my walls are a soft white that reflects light instead of absorbing it. (Paint and supplies were about 60 bucks.) If you asked me how much everything cost, I’d say: Vanity lights: $180 Light switch: $25 Mirror lights: $40 Paint:$60 Electrician: $150 Grande total = $455.
But spread out over a few months while I worked on each project. Not too shabby! Anyway.
Moral of the story: Don’t live in darkness like I did for THREE YEARS. Add some proper lighting to your space and watch your whole mood at home improve. And if you’re lost on where to start, start with your vanity lights.
That should be game changer number one. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. ?…
