Five of the Best Ways to Brighten up a Dark, Windowless Room

Americans in general love space. Our houses are getting bigger and bigger and we keep inventing new rooms. Bonus numbers ? Why not. Home theaters? Absolutely. And as anyone who’s ever moved from a small house to a big house knows… you fill those rooms with things.

But we often take spaces that are not traditionally used for living, such as dark, damp basements, and turn them into usable living spaces; or we share existing rooms to accommodate an extra child or an aggressive father-in-law. The end result is often a windowless space with the charm and atmosphere of a cell.

If you can’t afford to make major changes to your home, you’ll need to get creative if you want to decorate a room that lacks natural light. But you have options. Here are ways you can deal with this prison cell in your home, in order from least to most difficult.

Use a Sunlight Bulb for Circadian Lighting

In a dark, windowless room, it is easiest to artificially replace natural light with a sunlight bulb . These lamps are calibrated to mimic the look of natural light and can make your dark room feel warmer and more comfortable. You can even buy smart bulbs that can be programmed to follow the rhythm of natural light (called circadian lighting), dimming the lights in the evening and gradually brightening up during the day. It’s not a perfect replacement for natural light, but it can make a huge difference.

Use mirrors for the light you get from other rooms

If your dark room is adjacent to brighter areas of the house that receive natural light, you can reflect some of that light into your windowless hellhole through the strategic use of mirrors . This only works if you have a door that you can leave open, but adding a large mirror on the wall outside of the room and mirroring light from another room can flood the space with sunlight. You can maximize this effect by painting the walls a light color with a glossy finish and even installing furniture with reflective surfaces to keep the light moving through the space.

Install glass doors or walls

If you have the time, money, or skills, you might consider replacing the door to your gloomy windowless room with some kind of glass door that allows natural light to come in from other parts of your home. If there is a non-load-bearing wall that you can tear down, you might also consider replacing it with glass blocks . They allow light into the room without compromising privacy.

Use fake windows

If you’re practical enough and willing to dig into the project a bit, you can try installing fake windows . It sounds a little crazy, but it can make a huge difference. The project involves some LED panels, which are usually mounted to the ceiling, and installed into recesses in the wall, then creating an artificial window guard and trimming it like a normal window. Want to really go crazy? Use something like the SkyCeiling panel from Sky Factory to really replicate the look of a real window in your dungeon-like space.

Add skylights

Finally, if your dark windowless space can be renovated to include a skylight, you can get some real natural light in there without the use of tricks and positive thinking. Of course, this might not be possible in a basement, but if your light-limited room is on the top level of the house, it might be worth looking into. Depending on a variety of variables, this could be a DIY project for less than $1,000 , although it involves the nerve-wracking act of cutting a hole in the thing that keeps the rain out of your head.

A dark, windowless room (or a room with a window facing an adjacent wall) can be a depressing and unhappy place. The good news is that there is a solution for a wide variety of budgets and energy levels.