Track lighting, several movable lamps along a wired track, is the perfect solution for highlighting artwork on the walls, collections on shelves or your home's architectural details. But it can also just provide bright, consistent light for a task space or even an entire room. You could spend some bucks on a custom set like the one above, or you could just Do-It-Yourself...
You just need to mount a curtain rod and attach inexpensive clamp lights (We like the FAS ($9.99) and the LAGRA ($3.99) from Ikea) for a cheap and easy version of the industrial look of track lighting.
Sure, the example above is a little messy. But with your cord wrangling Unplggd-know-how, you should be able to tidy up that tangle and enjoy cheap track lighting.
You could even mount this DIY lighting on the ceiling. Just make sure your curtain rod hardware can hold the weight of the lamps and cords (Max weight should be on the product box somewhere) and that the hardware that holds the rod will still cradle it securely if you flip it sideways.
Top image from Lana_aka_BADGRL at Flickr with a Creative Commons license. Second Image from randofo at Instructables.
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Comments (5)
I did something very similar years ago, but buried the wiring inside the rod, which in my case was actually a stainless steel bathroom grab-bar. I'll never do that again, drilling a stainless tube with a hand-drill is an incredible chore!
Photos here:
http://www.kwyjibo.com/blog/index.asp?id=41
...and here:
http://www.kwyjibo.com/blog/index.asp?id=32
m.
that looks awfully ugly...
With a little bit of work, it wouldn't look to bad. I like @Micheal Wendell's pics... If you took that approach one step further and ditched the clamps in favor of just drilling straight through the pipe (you would have to have a pipe big enough to fit the wires and the screws for the lamps), then it wouldn't look too bad.
I'm thinkig about using this approach for some video work I'm doing in my garage.
It looks ugly cause of the wires. With a little diligence and a good drill, you could make it perdy :) Michael did something like that two or three up.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Another way to do this is to just use piping pieces, which would hide the wire inside and potentially look a lot cleaner.