Why a broken light switch made me prefer mood lighting
I'm not surprised by the lamp bathroom light trend on TikTok
I knew I needed to figure out what happened to my bathroom light and why it was flickering, then died. But I’d grown so used to motion detector lights that I didn’t care.
One of the things people either love about being a homeowner or loathe is that there is no landlord to call. If your screen door comes off the bolt, that’s on you. If a pipe bursts behind your bathroom tub wall, you better have money for a plumber. While homeowners have to pay mortgage and property insurance, we also save money on exorbitant rental rates and can lower our federal taxes owed. Still, we’re going to feel that dent in a checking account when repairs are needed.
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I’d already tackled a drywall repair after an electric baseboard fire. I just didn’t have the energy to deal with broken bathroom lights. So, I bought a pack of six motion detector lights, a collection of AAA batteries, strategically placed the light motion detectors on three of the four bathroom walls, and went about my business. Those lights became a nuisance when I was in the shower because they couldn’t detect motion behind my double shower curtain, and I’d have to randomly wave my arm to get the lights to come back on. Still, that wasn’t the end of the world.
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When my parents came over and wondered why the medicine cabinet lights weren’t on, I waved the topic away as something I’d get around to. Meanwhile, my mother was so fascinated by the motion detector lights I chose that she went home and bought herself a pack — and their lights were still working.
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About a month later, I finally reached out to a couple of electricians who simply said, “Replace the light switch.” They didn’t even want to come out because they claimed it was such a simple job. Meanwhile, I was traumatized and swearing I would catch the whole building on fire trying to replace a bathroom switch. But one woman electrician was so persistent about how women should know how to do this that I got off the phone ready to flex and scream, “I am woman. Hear me roar!”
But I chickened out. I reached out to my prior condo landlord’s maintenance guy to do it. He stopped by, looked up at the ceiling and said, “Just replace the light switch.” Why was everybody acting like turning off the circuit breaker and working on electrical wiring was no big deal? To me, this was like somebody telling me to “just cut down a tree.”
Recommended Read: “Why a broken light switch made me prefer mood lighting ~ I'm not surprised by the lamp bathroom light trend on TikTok”
Instead of the maintenance guy replacing the switch on his own, he insisted that I stand next to him and watch him do this do-it-yourself job from beginning to end. And when he was done, this felt about as simple as elementary school science projects I used to do. Now I understood why electricians were telling me that they felt like they’d be overcharging me replace my light switch.
When the maintenance guy left, I realized something. Even with a decorative new light plate and new light switch, I was never turning those three bright medicine cabinet lights on that made the entire bathroom glow like a department store. I just kept going in and out of my bathroom with only the motion detector lights on. I enjoyed not turning on bright lights in the middle of the night, not having to remember to turn the lights off and having mood lighting for a bath. If I wanted to read, I’d turn them on. Otherwise, 75% of the time, I used motion lights.
This is why I totally understand why lamps in bathrooms and bathroom lights are trending on TikTok. It’s not something I thought much about until I was forced to think about it. When my bedroom light switch needed to be replaced about a year after my bathroom light switch, I fixed it in a matter of minutes — and I bought a lamp, which I use far more than my ceiling fan lights.
Lamp lights have significant perks, and here’s why.