Wardrobe lighting for under £10

Happy bank holiday weekend!  Hope you all had a lovely long weekend. How is it August already?! This year has passed so quickly and soon summer will be over. 

Summer 2021 was a lot more like pre-Covid times as we met with friends more and we finally ate inside a restaurant!  Also, we tried out GoBoat Paddington with friends in London which was really fun! It’s a self-drive boat that you hire to travel along Regent’s Canal. I loved that there’s a table in the centre of the boat as it was perfect for us to have a picnic as we travelled along the canal. 

As we have been out and about a lot more, it’s been a little quiet on the blog this summer. I’m just figuring out a balance, please bear with me! 

Time to get back to the topic of this blog post! I finally added lights to our wardrobe this weekend and the total cost was less than £10 so sharing it on the blog in case anyone else is interested.

WARDROBE LIGHTING ON A BUDGET

Equipment:

• 2 Primark Home Indoor Strip Lights (£1.50 each): £3
• Primark Home 2pk Silver Touch Lights: £2.50
• Pack of AA batteries (needs 6): £2
• Pack of AAA batteries (needs 6): £2

Total price: £9.50

Part 1: Indoor Strip Lights

I was browsing in the Home section of Primark earlier this week and spotted these Indoor Strip Lights for £1.50! 

They seemed like a bargain so I bought two to see how it would look in our wardrobe and I was really pleased with how it turned out!

The cable length is 1.5m and there is adhesive on the other side of the lights so you can stick it directly to the wardrobe without using any other adhesive which is convenient. Initially, I just used some sellotape to hold it in place as I wanted to show Hubby how it looks first before sticking it all down!

I wanted the glass shelf and pull out tray to stand out so placed one strip light at the back of the glass shelf and the other at the front, under the glass shelf.  I think the strip lights would also look great at the top of the wardrobe, instead of the silver touch lights.

I love how our wardrobe looks with the strip lights on and how the light shines on the items in the pull out tray as we slide it open. It was a nice finishing touch to our wardrobe!

Part 2: Touch Lights

Again, I was curious to see what it meant by touch lights so bought a pack to see how they would look in our wardrobe.

It turns out that touch light in this case means you need to press the centre part of the light (at the top), like a button, to switch it on and off.

Again, these lights had adhesive on the bottom so you can easily attach it onto the surface. To decide on where to place the lights, I just used some Blu Tack to secure it initially.

Hubby suggested having the lights at the top, with the light shining down onto the clothes. In the end, I placed the lights in four different locations in our wardrobe to see which looked best:

- at the sides near the rail

- at the top of the wardrobe so the light shines down onto the clothes

- at the sides, near the back, just above the glass shelf

- at the sides in the lower part of the wardrobe

I ended up going with Hubby's suggestion. I think it looks great! It also looks cool when the sliding door is shut and you can see the light coming through!  I'm not sure why in some photos the light looks purple, when I used the light against a white wall, the light is white with a slight hint of blue.

IKEA also have some similar ones, called RAMSTA and a 3 pack is £6 so is more expensive but comes in a black case.  

My thoughts

Overall, I was impressed by the Primark Home lights. I thought they were great value for money. They were easy and quick to add to the wardrobe. It’s great that they already come with adhesive on the bottom so it’s even quicker to secure onto the wardrobe.

It would be so great if they had a sensor but given the price, manually switching on the lights is fine for us.

As the lights require batteries, that is a little inconvenient but we’ll see how regularly we need to replace the batteries. 

Also, for the strip lights, there is the case that holds the batteries so you'll need to hide it if you don't want it to be seen. I've placed them at the back of the wardrobe so they are not easily seen.

I didn’t know what colour the lights would be until we placed some batteries in and so it’s a shame that the colour of the light from the strip lights and touch lights are different. 

You can see in the photo above that the lighting from the strip lights have a yellow glow whereas the lighting from the touch lights are a whiter colour.

We were initially planning to use the IKEA wardrobe lighting but the ones we ordered either didn’t fit in the wardrobe or we didn’t have a plug socket near the wardrobe to connect to.  I’ve written about it in the PAX wardrobe review post here.  

I did try to use the STÖTTA LED cabinet lighting strip (see photo below). It’s a shame that the sensor doesn’t seem to work very well when I placed it at the bottom of the wardrobe. However, when we secure it to the side of the wardrobe, it does switch on when we slide open the doors.

Thank you so much for reading!  Please do share with others if you find the blog useful. Follow on Instagram for more photos, tips and home decor ideas!

Jess