Someone packing up an entire house or apartment and moving to a new space will have enough furniture and lighting to re-create their old home's interior decorating scheme with little trouble. But if you're about to move into your first apartment or are moving from a furnished living situation (where furniture was provided as part of the rental) to an unfurnished place, figuring out what you need can be overwhelming. Something that a number of people overlook is lighting. They figure that the kitchen and bathroom have built-in lights, and there must have been a ceiling light in the bedroom when they first saw the place, right? So they will have light when they move in. Or so they think.
If you're moving into a new place with no furniture to your name, do not neglect lighting. Yes, the kitchen and bathroom should have built-in lights, but those won't be enough to effectively light the rest of the place at night. And that ceiling light you might have seen on your tour may have been for show, or you might have seen a model unit, and your real unit doesn't have that same light. This means that when you move, you should always have some lamps and lights with you from the start. Three types in particular will help.
A Floor Lamp You Can Disassemble
Whether you get a torchiere, a curved-arm reading lamp, or a classic floor lamp with shade, having a floor lamp that you can either fit easily into the backseat of a car or that you can disassemble will be so, so helpful. If you move into an unfurnished apartment and have no floor lamp that you can put in the living room, your new place is going to look rather depressing at night. And finding a floor lamp that you like isn't that easy because what's on the shelves at the local big-box store may be too expensive, too flimsy, or too impractical for your tastes. If you can, before you move, visit a lighting store to look at their selection of floor lamps.
A Battery-Operated Lamp
No, not a flashlight or campsite lantern, but a battery-operated table lamp. First, a table lamp will provide a decent amount of light even if you have to place the lamp on a couple of cardboard boxes for the next few days. The battery operation allows you to use it even if something turns out to be wrong with your new place's electrical outlets. As you wait for repairs to be done, you'll still have a good amount of light at night.
Touch/Tap/Push Lights
You will invariably find one, if not two things: spots that just don't get a lot of light, such as the corners of a small hall closet, and a lack of lighting just inside the door that you can turn on when you come home at night. Many places have a switched outlet (one that's connected to and controlled by a light switch) near the door that you can plug a lamp into, but some places don't have this. For both of these situations, tap lights (also called push lights or touch lights) are invaluable. A simple tap on these small lights illuminates a room enough so you can see what you're doing.
Lighting stores are the best places to find lamps and other lights because they'll have a huge selection compared to the one aisle you might find at a big-box store. When you know you're moving, go get lighting if you don't have your own lamps already.
Contact a company like Lighting & Design Studio to learn more.
