Turn Your Kitchen Mixing Bowls Into A Money-Saving Pendant Light With This Viral Hack

Pendant lights are one of the most trendy ways to bring some functional decor into your home, but even minimalistic designs can often run you upwards of $200 for a single fixture, despite their simplicity. Thankfully, however, their basic design makes them incredibly easy to recreate yourself, and popular TikTok creator and designer Emily Shaw showed a low-cost way to transform two basic kitchen bowls into a DIY pendant light that's both easy to assemble and renter-friendly.

In her video, she created a fixture that relies on remote-controlled and battery-powered LED lights as the light source, meaning you won't have to go through the complicated process of wiring your own light or installing it directly into the ceiling. Instead, you can create a piece of decor that's moveable, easy to switch on and off, and significantly less expensive than a store-bought light fixture, all while still getting the same look as something more costly and involved.

In her TikTok, Emily Shaw begins by picking up two metal mixing bowls. The size and exact shape don't matter much, but it's best to find options that have a flat bottom. From there, she sprays them with gold paint and adds an optional protective coat to make sure nothing gets scratched. Of course, you can keep the bowls their initial color, or you can go for a different color of paint if you'd rather have something that better matches your existing décor.

Once they're dried, she begins assembling them. Shaw uses Gorilla Construction Adhesive to glue the bottoms of the two bowls together, then glues her LED lights to the inside of one of the bowls to act as her light source. She didn't share the exact lights she used, but similar options are available online like these BLS Wireless Dimmable LED Puck Lights with Remote Control. Finally, she glues down a hook to the inside of the other mixing bowl and hangs her light over an exposed pipe in her room with a loop of rope.

If you plan to try out this hack for yourself, there are plenty of ways to customize it to your liking. If you already have an existing hanging light, you could easily use this hack as a way to replace your existing shade — just bypass the LED lights and hooks in Emily Shaw's video, and drill a hole to thread your existing bulb and wiring through. This would likely be much easier with plastic bowls rather than metal, but it's still important to make sure you're choosing a material that can handle the heat from a typical lightbulb running all day.

Additionally, if you still want to make this a renter-friendly DIY but you don't have access to a convenient pipe like in Shaw's office, you can easily install a hook directly onto your ceiling and connect the two hooks with a chain. Because this light fixture is relatively light, a Command Strip on the ceiling would likely have enough staying power to keep everything where it needs to be. But, of course, it's best to check your product's weight limits to ensure nothing will come crashing down in the middle of the night.