Lighting guide
Lighting a rental you are not allowed to rewire
Most rental agreements in Kenya are clear that the wiring is not yours to touch, and most landlords are slow about fittings even when they agree. That rules out half the advice in any lighting article. This is the half that still works.
Work with sockets, not switches
Every improvement below plugs into an existing socket. Nothing here needs an electrician, a landlord's permission, or a hole in a wall, and all of it leaves with you at the end of the tenancy.
The one thing worth checking first is where your sockets actually are. In a lot of Kenyan flats they are sparse and awkwardly placed, which quietly decides where lamps can live. Map them before you buy anything.
Extension leads are a lighting tool
A flat, well-made extension lead run along a skirting board is the difference between a lamp in the right corner and a lamp wherever the socket happens to be. Buy a decent one with proper earthing rather than the cheapest available, run it along the wall rather than under a rug, and tape it down if it crosses a walkway.
This is unglamorous and it is the single most enabling thing in a badly socketed flat.
Change the bulb, not the fitting
You are usually allowed to change a bulb even when you cannot change a fitting. Swapping the ceiling bulb from 6500 K cool white to something warmer costs under KSh 900 and transforms how the room reads at night. Keep the original in a drawer and put it back when you move out.
Light the walls
- An uplight in a corner. Bounces off the ceiling and makes a low room read taller. Works especially well over dark tiled floors.
- A lamp beside a mirror. Effectively doubles the light without a second lamp.
- A lamp behind a sheer curtain. Turns a window into a soft glowing panel at night rather than a black rectangle.
- Nothing screwed to a wall. Freestanding only, so there is no deposit argument later.
Buy for the next flat too
Rental tenure in Nairobi is short, and the best argument for lamps over fittings is that lamps move. A good lamp bought now will light three flats. A fitting you pay an electrician to install lights one, and you leave it behind.