ISO: The Perfect Light

You would think, as you sit down to plan out your children's nursery, that you might have trouble deciding on colors or bedding or something like that. You would never think it would be too hard to find a ceiling fixture that would be fun and interesting for them, right?

Sooooo wrong.

Well, wrong in the sense that I don't have $200 - $300 lying around to spend on a light in a nursery...or a light in any other part of my house for that matter.

I thought my criteria were pretty simple: inexpensive (under $50), at least two bulbs, and appropriately cute for a baby's room. Here's some of the lights that I would've loved for the room.

From Lamps Plus, we have the Galaxy Chrome Ceiling Light...at the low, low price of $300.

This whole plethora of giclee shade lights that come in amazing colors and prints that start at $120.

I found a lot of pendants and mini-chandeliers, but when your husband has risk of hitting his head every time he goes in the room, I think those are out. Plus, the majority of them were very girly...like this one from Pottery Barn. I mean, I like it, but it wouldn't match the decor we decided to go with. Plus, the chandelier is $99 while each shade is $12. Yep...moving on.

So I decided to go with good ol' standby of Ikea. They have nice lighting that's usually far under the $50 range. I found two that were cute. The SKOJIG cloud light and the SMILA SOL sun light.

Such a joy! Both fell into the price range as well as meeting my other two criteria. Plus they both went with the theme of the room. We have hills and birds on the wall, why not have a sun or clouds on the ceiling? Perfect! So I put in my order for the Skojig with the always trusty guys at ModerNash. (If you live in Nashville, and you love Ikea, it is worth it to look up these guys. They are wonderful!)

The order comes back with all of my items...except for the light. It was out of stock. Nick sends me an email and says they'll pick it up on their next run to Atlanta. I go online to check the availability--it's out of stock and no date is set for restocking. Wonderful. Brilliant. The light I want is not even available at trusty Ikea, so I make a decision. The Smila Sol is still quite cute, so I tell them to pick that one up if the other light isn't available. A couple of weeks later, I get my Smila Sol...with missing parts. Ugh.

I send it back, get the new light, and voila! Tim installs it, and it looks soooooo cute. But then we turn it on.

It looks cute, right? Well, you weren't in the room. Since we'd chosen neutral colors for the walls, it gave the entire room this odd yellowish glow. The yellow birds and flowers painted on the wall turned neon and all the non-black furniture looked a little off. The light is meant for a room with cooler colors. The blues and purples and blacks looked great against the light, but sadly, that's just doesn't work for us.

So the search continued... And, once again, I kept finding nice lights outside of our price range or low-end lights that just didn't fit the bill. Finally, I decided that I wanted a cute light and I would stretch the budget a little. Turns out, it really does help! Tim and I finally agreed on a very cute light that we purchased from CSN Lighting yesterday for $75.

It still falls in my sky theme, and we love it!