Smart Lighting Tips to Brighten Up Your Rental

Decorating a home can be a fun experience, but  as a renter, you may encounter some roadblocks that hinder your creative spirit. Today, I’ll delve into some energy efficient, renter-friendly ideas that are simple, make a major impact, incorporate smart home technology.

Ideas for Decorating a Rental Home

When thinking of elements you want to change in a rental home/apartment, you may think of wall colors and flooring.

• Wall colors: use removable peel and stick wallpaper (here’s my apartment dining room in my former apartment), large scale art made of fabric or a shower curtain, or add drapery rods and panels to break up the wall color a bit.
• Flooring: rugs add so much style to a space and can be found affordably at most retailers, vintage/antique stores and on Facebook Marketplace.

But, if you are like me, you’ll probably also have an opinion about improving the light within your rental property. Today, I’m sharing some great tips and ideas to elevate your rental space with smart bulbs.

Most rental homes tend to have basic light bulbs in random color temperatures that can’t be dimmed. A simple swap to an energy-efficient Bulbrite Solana LED chandelier bulb or standard bulb can put lighting customizations such as brightness, color temperature, custom scenes and integration at your fingertips with Alexa and Google Home (no separate hub required).

Setting Up Bulbrite Solana LED Smart Bulbs

Before I show you all the amazing features of the bulbs, I want to mention that Bulbrite has a myriad of bulb options for most standard lighting found in living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms.

The Bulbrite Solana LED smart bulbs have built-in WiFi that allows each bulb to connect to the Bulbrite app which then integrates with Alexa and Google Assistant.

Additionally, these tech-packed bulbs are very energy efficient. Each bulb costs about $0.48-$0.66 to power for an ENTIRE year based on 3 hours per day of usage, and the lifespan of each bulb is about 13 years which means you’ll enjoy these bulbs for a longtime.

Setting up a bulb is as easy as screwing in the bulb(s), powering it on and following the step-by-step directions in Bulbrite’s free app. From there, you can assign it to a room or a group in your home, plus you can connect it to Alexa or Google so you can set-up scenes, routines and voice commands.

Now, let’s dive into the features and benefits of swapping plain light bulbs out for a Bulbrite Solana LED smart bulb.

Customization Options for Your Bulbrite Solana LED Smart Bulbs

Ceiling/Hardwired Fixtures

Once you’ve got your bulbs installed, the real fun begins! You literally have a whole world of lighting customization options at your fingertips within the app.

I chose the chandelier bulbs for my kitchen island light because the regular/standard chandelier bulbs I originally installed were overly warm and very bright.

I am now able to customize the color temperature (cool, daylight and warm) as well as the brightness. Let me show you all some pictures so you can get an idea.

Here’s cool/warm settings at the full brightness setting.

Here’s cool/daylight/warm settings at the dimmest/lowest brightness setting.

Another unique feature of the Bulbrite app is, that fixtures with multiple bulbs can each be selectively turned on or off, unlike the standard light switch you have in your rental home now. A tip for accomplishing this easily is to name the bulbs in numerical order (ex: 1-7) in the Bulbrite app when you first install them. In the photo below, I have bulbs 2, 4 and 6 turned off.

If you’re thinking, “Monica, I am mostly worried about my own table and floor lamps,” then this next section is for you. 

Table & Floor Lamps

Adding additional lighting to your rental is a genius idea– plus it’s yours to take with you should you ever move! In a former apartment, we only used our floor and table lamps in the living room space because the ceiling fan light was so harsh and bright.

I love adding a floor lamp at the end of a sofa or loveseat to curl up and read a book. Console or sofa tables are also another great option to add in a lamp or two,

Much like the chandelier bulbs I mentioned earlier, the standard bulbs have the same features so your lamp lighting can now be customized, too.

Above is a corner of my living room where I have a gorgeous lamp that I hardly ever used. Why? Well, the gold foil liner of the shade made the light very warm, so we simply never turned it on.

Now with our Bulbrite bulbs, I can easily change the bulb to a cooler hue which helps create the most stunning, crisp lighting that brings this corner to life.

Here’s cool/warm settings at the full brightness setting.

Here’s cool/warm settings at the dimmest/lowest brightness setting.

This lamp gets tons of use now, and I even set-up a routine with Alexa to have it turn on at a specific time in the evening when we’re home and cuddled on the sofa together. And if we happen to be out, I can easily turn it off within the app.

Benefits of Smart Home Light Bulbs for Renters

If I haven’t convinced you yet, here’s a recap of all the benefits of swapping standard bulbs for these energy efficient Bulbrite Solana light bulbs.

• Each smart bulb costs an average of $0.48-$0.66 to power for an entire year.
• Bulbs last about 13 years when used 3 hours per day.
• You can take them with you when you move. They are yours!
• Forget to turn off the lights? Not a problem, use the app for peace of mind.
• Bulbs can be customized for brightness and color temperature right at your fingertips.
• They integrate with Alexa and Google Assistant. Create routines, turn them on and off, or add them to your groups to control entire rooms with voice commands.

And one final thing I should mention is that you can create scenes within the Bulbrite app. Maybe you want a game night scene where it’s bright or a romantic date night scene where it’s warm and dim to mimic candlelight as you watch Netflix and eat takeout. The possibilities are endless.

This is a paid partnership with Bulbrite. All opinions are my own. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below.