Installing a New Dining Room Light Fixuture

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One of the easiest things to do to update a room is change out light fixtures. It’s a very quick and inexpensive DIY project that you can easily do to customize your space and make it your own.

The fixtures in our house aren’t terrible – they work and they’re fairly new. They’re just not our style. So we’ve been slowly working on replacing a few of them here and there as the budget allows and when I happen to find good deals. The first light fixture I replaced was in our main/hall bathroom (see bathroom posts: (1) inspiration & (2) progress).

Before this quick bathroom makeover I’d never done any electrical work myself. But after a little research on YouTube I found that it was super easy to switch fixtures and decided to tackle these changes myself.

So with one lighting swap already behind me, Max and I decided we could also replace the dining room light ourselves. I just needed to find a fixture!

This is what the dining area looked like before (from the listing).

Obviously swapping out the light wasn’t crucial. It worked just fine and looked ok for the time being. So I took my time figuring out what I wanted since there was no rush to decide. Here are some of the inspiration photos that spoke to me while I was trying to figure out what new dining room fixture I wanted.

Photos via: (1) Becki Owens (2) Studio McGee (3) Decorist (4) Apartment Therapy

Turns out I was wanting something a little more modern and industrial. But… those exact ones in the photos were a little large for our dining room and very much out of our price range (see: Circa Lighting – $1260 & Restoration Hardware – $1795).

While I was at Menards buying spray paint for another project I’ve been up to, I decided to check out their available fixtures. They were also having an 11% rebate special so that was also motivation to find something I liked while I could get the rebate.

And voila!

I found a fixture that was very similar and for a fraction of the price of what the high-end ones were going for.

Max helped me hang it up after work one evening. And we’ve been loving it!

And now I’m deciding whether I want to recover the dining room chairs (maybe a darker blue?), get new chairs, and/or get a new dining table. What we currently have is very mid-century.

I would also like to be able to seat more than four people around the table or to have the option to expand to fit even more. At least six would be nice. Again, there’s no rush on this since what we have works just fine. But if something happens to pop up on Craigslist for a good deal I might just snap it up!

And now for the before/after side by side.