DIY Multi-Bulb Chandelier

by Love & Renovations

$250

2 Days

Medium

This project is my absolute favorite thing my husband and I have ever created! It's the absolute focal point of our entire downstairs, and it never fails that someone asks about it every time they come to our house!
It's much simpler to create than it may look, and we created it from absolutely nothing! The full tutorial is quite involved, so I'll give the highlights here, but you can click over to my blog to see all of the details.

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Let's get to the explanation.

To make this project, you'll need:

- 1 6-foot 1X12 board

- Stain in your favorite shade

- 80 globe light bulbs

- 8 light sockets (we used these)

- Approximately 24 feet of braided electrical wire (like so)

- 12-feet of 1 electrical conduit

- 72 3/4 knock-out seals

- Approximately 175 feet of braided rope

- Silver spray paint

Start by cutting your board down to the desired length (ours is 5 feet long) and marking where you want your lights to go. This is an imprecise process, and involves a lot of trial and error - full details of how we did this can be found on the blog post.

Next, we built and stained the box that our lights would hang down from. The sizing all depends on your room and how large you want the fixture to be!

We built faux light sockets out of electrical conduit for all of the light bulbs that weren't going to be functioning (we have 80 light bulbs in the fixture, but only 8 of them actually work). See the blog post for details on how these were created, but we used electrical conduit and knock-out seals to create them.

We drilled holes in the light box for where each bulb would go, and added top that was similar to our electrical wire to each hole with a non-working bulb. The ropes are various lengths, to add to the random look of the fixture (to see all the details of how we determined lengths and what we used, see the full post).

Then, we added in the working lights and tested it all out. We went ahead and hung the light at this point, and added the non-working bulbs afterwards. We added the other bulbs by simply threading the faux sockets through the rope and tying a knot to hold them in place, then we added a dot of superglue in the faux socket and pushed the bulb up into it.

We enough glue to hold them in place, but not so much that we can't take them out and trade them for one of the working bulbs if they burn out! We basically have a never-ending supply of lightbulbs waiting to be rotated!

Once we added all of the bulbs in, we made a few adjustments in length of the rope in areas that looked "off" to us.

For all of the details, materials list, and more photos of the finished product, you can click through to the blog post!

UPDATED: After lots of requests for a photo of the fixture lit up, here's one I took this evening! It's hard to really capture how it looks lit up in a photo, but this is a pretty good example. :)

For the full tutorial with lots more photos and details, be sure to check out the blog link below!

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Frequently asked questions

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3 of 20 questions

Pamela Ann Moylan on Apr 04, 2017

How did you wire it?

0
Dee on Apr 04, 2017

It's so gorgeous. Great job.

0
Tracy Cavinee Shinn on May 29, 2017

what happens when the winds blows in the window?

1

Comments

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3 of 105 comments

Ruth Ann on Sep 04, 2017

I think it would be fabulous is you painted the non-working bulbs with mercury glass paint.

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Elaine on Nov 19, 2017

This project has to be one of the best decor ideas EVER on Hometalk! It’s sophisticated, modern (yet not overly modern that it wouldn’t suit a more traditional interior), creative, unique and SO stylish!! You must be so very proud of your idea and I congratulate you and your husband. Well done!!!

1 Reply
- Love & Renovations on Dec 15, 2017
  Thanks so much, Elaine!
  
  Like