I Asked a Designer How to Brighten My Living Room with No Hardwired Lights — Here’s Her Genius Fix

I know I shouldn’t play favorites, but who am I kidding: The living room is by far the best room in my home. Listen, can you blame me? My current living room is twice the size of my old one, features windows facing out on California’s cotton candy sunsets, and has a fireplace covered in pretty tiles. That said, the only thing I don’t love about the space is its lack of lighting. 

Most spaces have some type of hardwired fixture, whether it’s a pair of wall sconces or a polarizing boob light overhead. But my living room? Not a light source in sight. If I didn’t haphazardly add two globe lamps to opposite corners of the space, my living room would be pitch-black come nightfall. 

My two floor lamps have certainly helped brighten my living room, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there was a better way to illuminate this space. The catch: My husband and I live in a rental, so there was no way we were going to mess with our unit’s electrical. While my delightful-yet-dim living room definitely isn’t the norm — a sconce or pendant seems like a no-brainer! — I’m not the only one who has lighting issues.

“Renting isn’t easy for design lovers because you’re painfully limited in what you can creatively do to your space to really make it your own,” says designer and HGTV alum Galey Alix. “If your ceilings and walls aren’t already hardwired, you’re out of luck … and light.” 

Even if you do have a built-in source, Alix says a lack of layered lighting can really put a damper on a renter’s overall design. “There’s something undeniably elevated about having soft light on your walls as the sun sets,” she adds. “Most renters sadly aren’t able to enjoy that evening glow because the majority of apartments have ceiling high hats — not on dimmers, mind you — and they certainly don’t have wiring for wall sconces.”

Since Alix single-handedly fixed my living room’s chaotic cord situation, I knew she’d be the perfect person to help me with my lighting saga. Turns out, her solution was rather simple: Add wireless sconces. “[They] require no hard wires in walls as they are wire-free,” she explains. “That’s right, you can literally hang them wherever your heart desires. And you can do so with as much ease and freedom as you’d hang a picture frame.”

Unlike built-in lighting, which is hardwired into your home, these sconces come with reusable bulbs you can plug in to charge when they get a little dull. Some even come with remote controls to help you adjust the brightness and color temperature! Alix recommended three options, but I felt the traditional attitude of HIFCTRN’s wall sconces fit my home’s classic-meets-coastal vibe. Plus, the brass touches totally match the floor lamps I purchased years ago.

As Alix points out, sconces look good in a lot of places. “These are ideal for running down the walls of a long hallway to create path lighting in the evenings, on either side of your TV in your living room, or flanking the sides of a mirror or artwork in your foyer or dining room,” she shares. 

But in my home? Placing these sconces on the wall above my fireplace was the obvious choice.

Despite writing about home decor for a living, my level of DIY expertise tops off at a peel-and-stick application. These wall sconces need to be properly mounted — and since I wasn’t willing to destroy my living room — I enlisted a local handyman to help. While I can’t necessarily speak to the installation process, I can tell you the handyman mounted both sconces (and hung up three frames) in under 45 minutes.

Truthfully, I love these sconces so much that I wish I had asked Alix for her recommendation sooner. Since we don’t have a ceiling light, I asked my handyman to mount these a little higher than normal to add some extra height to our layered lighting. Not only do these sconces brighten up our room, but they also draw the eye up to our tray ceilings. Even my husband, who has admittedly been skeptical about this whole project, keeps gushing over how “romantic” and “grown-up” the sconces make our living room.

And that’s the other thing: Adding these fixtures also influenced us to rework our mantle decor. For years, we treated our fireplace as another spot for framed photos and tchotchkes. However, once we added our wireless lights, our mantle and adjacent bookshelves felt so cluttered. We swiftly removed a lot of knicknacks — and only left a few with sentimental value — and immediately saw how much better our fireplace looked. Grown-up and gorgeous? Now that’s a bright idea.