Between social media gripes about vibe-killing “big lights” and home-decor sites sneering at boob lights—those rounded, center-tipped ceiling fixtures found in countless homes—overhead lighting usually doesn’t get a lot of love.
If you don’t like your current flush-mount ceiling light, the best (and usually the cheapest) option is to swap the fixture out. But if you rent and aren’t allowed to fiddle with the electrical wiring, a company called Tulip developed an easy fix: Simply hide your ceiling light with a shade.
Home blogs have touted variations on this DIY hack for years—think of it as the inverted version of tossing a scarf over a lamp, without the dorm-room fortune-teller look. But we’ve never seen a manufactured kit that makes the installation process so effortless.
After months of seeing Tulip shades all over the place, we decided to order several of them to test for a few months to see if they were worth the $100-plus price tag. Three people on Wirecutter’s staff, myself included, each hung a different Tulip design in our home to either soften overhead lights or cover boring ceiling fixtures that we hadn’t gotten around to replacing.
Our collective takeaway: No hate, but no raves. The Tulip shade is simply okay, a convenient but expensive Band-Aid with limited aesthetic options and some careless construction choices.
These simple-to-install cotton-canvas shades work fine to hide a flush ceiling light. They’re especially convenient for renters, but the kits are expensive for what you get, and the company currently offers only three shapes to choose from.
