Lighting a First Home: The Room-by-Room List

21 Jul 2026

Furnishing a first apartment, lighting is usually the last thing anyone budgets for and the first thing everybody notices. It also has the worst information around it: showrooms sell you a chandelier and stop talking.

So here is the whole list. What a normal Egyptian flat actually needs, room by room, in the order worth buying it.

The one idea that makes the rest obvious

Every room wants three layers of light, and almost every new flat is handed over with one.

  1. The ceiling light — lights the room. This is the layer you already have a wire for.
  2. The task light — a floor lamp, a table lamp, a pendant over a counter. Lights what you are actually doing.
  3. The evening light — wall sconces. Lights the room after 10pm, when nobody wants the main light on.

A flat with only layer one has exactly two settings: bright and off. That is the problem you are solving, and it is why the list below has more than four items on it.

The room-by-room list

Reception / living room — 3 fixtures

  • 1 chandelier or ceiling fixture, sized to the room. Add length and width in metres, multiply by 8, get the diameter in centimetres. A 4 × 5 m room wants about 72 cm.
  • 1 floor lamp beside the seating. This is the single most useful light in the whole flat and the one most often skipped.
  • 2 wall sconces if the room is large or has a defined seating end.

Start at living room lighting.

Dining area — 1 fixture, sized to the table

Not to the room. Width should be half to two-thirds of the table's width and never wider than the table; hang the lowest point 75–90 cm above the tabletop. Round fixture over a round table, linear pendant over a rectangular one.

Start at dining room lighting.

Bedroom — 3 fixtures

  • 1 ceiling fixture. In a bedroom this is usually where a flush fitting beats a chandelier — it is the room you are most likely to walk into a hanging piece.
  • 2 bedside lights — either table lamps on the nightstands, or wall sconces at about 120 cm so you can reach the switch lying down.

Start at bedroom lighting.

Second bedroom — 2 fixtures

One ceiling fixture, one bedside lamp. Buy this room last; it is the one whose use changes most in the first two years.

Kitchen — 1 to 3 fixtures

One ceiling fixture, plus pendants over an island or breakfast bar if you have one. Three in a row look intentional; two look accidental. Keep 60–75 cm between centres.

Hallway, entrance and stairs — 2 to 4 fixtures

A lantern or pendant at the entrance, and sconces repeated along the corridor. This is the cheapest room to transform: four EGP 790 sconces change a corridor more than any single expensive piece would.

Start at wall lights and lanterns.

Bathroom — 1 to 2 fixtures

A flush ceiling fitting, plus a light beside or above the mirror if the wiring allows it. Overhead-only lighting in a bathroom puts every shadow on your face in the wrong place.

So what does that total?

A two-bedroom Egyptian flat comes to roughly 12–16 fixtures. That number surprises most first-time buyers, which is exactly why lighting budgets run out halfway through.

The buying order that actually works

You do not need all of it on day one. Buy in this order:

  1. Every ceiling fixture, in every room. These need the electrician, and the electrician is easier to book once than five times.
  2. Bedroom bedside lights. The room you feel the difference in first.
  3. The living room floor lamp. No wiring, immediate effect.
  4. Hallway and corridor sconces.
  5. Everything else, over the first year, as you learn how you actually use the flat.

The two things people waste money on

1. A chandelier that is too tall. Most Egyptian ceilings are 2.6–2.8 m, and most chandelier guides online are written for 3 m and up. Allow 20–25 cm of fixture height per metre of ceiling: a 2.8 m ceiling wants a chandelier under about 70 cm tall. Our size guide works this out for you.

2. Buying the expensive piece first. The Statement chandelier is the most memorable purchase and the least urgent one. A flat with good sconces and no chandelier feels finished. A flat with a magnificent chandelier and one bare bulb in the corridor does not.

One more thing worth knowing early

Pick your light colour and stick to it across the whole flat. Mixing warm bulbs in one room with cool white in the next is the most common reason a well-furnished apartment still feels off, and it costs nothing to avoid. We wrote a short guide on warm versus cool light.

How we make this less risky

Buying 14 fixtures for a flat you have not moved into yet is a real leap of faith, so the terms matter:

  • 2–4 day delivery in Cairo and Giza, up to 7 days elsewhere in Egypt — so you can buy room by room as the flat comes together instead of guessing everything at once.
  • Free returns — message us within 14 days, we collect from your door at no cost, refund within 72 hours. No questions.
  • 3-year warranty on every piece.
  • Orders above EGP 10,000 are confirmed with a 50% deposit, balance on delivery. Full details on delivery and returns.

If you would rather talk it through room by room, message us on WhatsApp with your floor plan and ceiling height. That conversation is free and it is usually shorter than you expect.