Mister Jupiter and I both love modern everything. We like bright white, and high gloss finishes. We love stainless steel appliances and the occasional industrial accent piece.
Luckily IKEA knows what we want, but we don’t always live within driving distance of a store (and I’ll happily drive five hours one-way for IKEA). Or if we’re within a five-hour-driving radius, we simply don’t have time to spend ten hours in the car.
This means that we face a few design challenges. We move every one to four years and we can’t buy or build modern homes at each move -although we would love to. So our solution is to buy and enjoy a variety of modern home goods that can make our traditional-build home feel bright and modern.
Disclosure: This site contains affiliate links; I may earn a tiny commission from purchases.
Military nomad or not, I know there are others like us. We are dreamers stuck in a world that adores heavy oak cabinets, and aged-bronze effect doorknobs. It’s hard to change the preferred decor of a nation, but we can do the next best thing and buy affordable modern products. Successful businesses meet consumer demand, so we demand beautiful and affordable home goods!
How can you create demand? Easy! Just think of each dollar as a vote. I vote for low wattage LEDs. I vote for white powder coated steel and sustainable bamboo.
Like the most people, we have to work with what we have. Luckily a quick way to change a home is with lighting. For this article we’ll ignore installed fixtures and talk about renter-friendly consumer lighting; you know –lamps.
I actually found some real gems on Amazon. Specifically after I discovered Brightech. I told Mister that I was looking to replace a lamp, because moving it was a pain. We bought this slim LED replacement right away, and we re-homed the heavy stainless steel lamp when we lived in Kansas.
Brightech has more lamps that I am interested in, like the linear version of my arc light and this eye-catching twisted lamp.
Last year I was looking for new lighting for our library (it’s is just a bedroom that happens to have bookcases instead of a bed). I decided that we needed reading lamps because the room only has one dim ceiling fixture. I found these minimalist lamps that happen to look amazing with these bulbs (I prefer warm white, but a bluey multicolor is available). They look fantastic, and I feel like I am getting my money’s worth.
So far, these are the best options I can find in affordable modern lighting. I am always looking for more choices, and hopefully will be buying more lamps as needed (we never know what lighting we’ll need when we move as often as we do).
This post was written in 2018, then lightly refreshed in 2021. Since the original publishing we have kept the same lamps!
Lady Jupiter 