7 Bulkhead Lighting Ideas to Elevate Your Home

In pursuit of the ever-popular industrial vibe? Bulkhead lights can be great for achieving the look and functional ethos of this style.

Get inspired by some of our favourite ways to incorporate these versatile lights into your home, effectively embracing a charming twist for modern and vintage spaces.

Introducing Bulkheads 2.0

Our oval Bulkheads epitomise our timeless appreciation for Industrial design, capturing its essence through robust materials and a refined aesthetic. With deep reverence for these classics, we’ve carefully implemented subtle upgrades that enhance their functionality and adaptability, while preserving their enduring charm.

We've improved the material composition of the brass Bulkheads to be crafted from 100% brass and adjusted our mould design to allow combined wiring options in one fitting.

These fixtures boast a substantial weight that speaks to their enduring quality and durability. Adaptations to the material composition, highlights the value we place on quality and authenticity, making these products even more resistant over time. Because of the substantial weight of these units, we’ve slimmed down the frames to complement the solid brass construction. This design refinement adds to their aesthetic appeal, whilst lending to a sleeker and more stylish look for interior and exterior spaces.

Brass is a great option for outdoor and landscape lighting because of its resilience and rustproof qualities. Exposure to outdoor elements means this fixture will turn darker over time, adding unique character that pays homage to its enduring legacy. Our bulkhead range will provide you with long-lasting, high-quality lighting solutions that will elevate your outdoor area.

Other units are available in brushed gunmetal and black, maintaining the industrial look while boasting a polished, contemporary design. While back wiring remains a favoured choice for many light fittings, we recognise the importance of flexibility and wiring versatility for our lighting solutions. We have meticulously designed these lighting fixtures to offer a dual wiring option, incorporating both back and side wiring so you can achieve a tidy and seamless appearance. This thoughtful design ensures that outdoor and indoor spaces exude both elegance and functionality, allowing for clean and seamless installation.

Sometimes it’s the smallest details that make the most impact. Our upgraded Bulkheads feature screws that are sleeker and more streamlined, seamlessly blending in with their contemporary and industrial design.

In our upgraded bulkhead range you'll also find they come with multi-tonal caps in black, gunmetal and brass finishes. These caps not only help to secure the lightbulb firmly to the fitting but also contribute to a cohesive appearance. This ensures a comprehensive and polished look for your lighting installations.

What is a Bulkhead Light?

The very word ‘bulkhead’ evokes images of an industrial nature, making us think of ships and aircrafts. Originally, these kinds of fixtures were used to illuminate the partitions that divided a ship’s hull, also proving useful for lighting industrial warehouses and other commercial premises. They were the preferred solution for these spaces thanks to being waterproof, durable and capable of withstanding various harsher conditions.

Despite having a maritime and industrial heritage that’s firmly rooted in functionality, bulkhead lights have since become popular choices for use in domestic interiors and exteriors, bringing distinctly stylish elements of personality and charm into a space.

How to Use Stylish Bulkhead Lights in Your Home

With their inherently nautical and industrial feel, bulkhead lights make ideal additions to vintage-inspired spaces or designs that require a unique highlight while remaining a practical lighting option.

Usually embracing robust, caged designs and striking metal finishes, bulkhead lights are popular accent pieces in modern industrial rooms. They effortlessly capture a sense of classic industrial flair without enforcing an overwhelming nautical theme.

Due to being dust and water-resistant, bulkhead fixtures make great choices for bathrooms or exterior spaces like patios. They will brighten up these areas sufficiently while offering a purposeful design feature – lighting in functional areas does not have to be purely practical!

Our bulkhead range includes various shapes, sizes, styles and finishes so you can easily coordinate with your existing designs.

1. Bathroom Mirror Bulkhead Lights

Bulkhead wall lights look fantastic on either side of a bathroom mirror, subtly complementing other metal details and shining light into this multi-functional area to act as useful task lighting.

You could install a single fixture above a mirror to cascade light below or use a pair of smaller oval lights to frame the mirror – as shown in the sleek bathroom here.

2. Bathroom Mood Lighting

Bulkhead lights aren’t only great for illuminating mirrors in bathrooms; they can also be crucial when it comes to providing ambient mood lighting. Strategically positioning your favourite bulkhead by the bath or within a bathroom nook is a great way to create pockets of warmth and character, enhancing the overall atmosphere and level of comfort.

3. Kitchen Bulkhead Accents

Bulkhead lights mounted to the wall can also bring a bit of visual interest to kitchens, adding a hint of rustic charm to otherwise minimal spaces. The exposed look and metal finish of our bulkhead fixtures blends beautifully with other natural kitchen features like wooden beams and counters or stone floors.

The sconce-style lights shown below work well as space-saving options, allowing you to inject plenty of style without committing to a more prominent fixture.

4. Enhancing Bedroom Themes

When used in bedrooms, bulkhead lights can help create a cosy ambience while elevating particular themes with new levels of sophistication. These striking fixtures add a layer of refinement to nautical or coastal themes, making the room more livable and timeless without taking away a vital sense of personality.

5. Home Office & Workshop Lighting

Going back to its practical roots, bulkhead designs also lend themselves well to places of work, whether this means boosting your home office or giving a stylish boost to workshops or garage spaces.

Lights in places like these need to be practical first and foremost – but it certainly doesn’t hurt when you're surrounded by stylish details that add to an environment of concentration and creativity!

6. Bulkhead Lighting For Patios & Gardens

And let’s not forget how useful bulkhead lighting can be for illuminating outdoor spaces to increase security and accessibility or just making gardens nicer to spend time in as it gets darker.

Our bulkhead lights are available with various IP ratings, including IP65, meaning they can be mounted to your exterior walls and will keep shining whatever the weather. See our extensive range of outdoor lights for even more designs.

7. Front Door Lighting

You could also utilise bulkhead lights to make a good first impression by incorporating them into your front porch. They’re ideal for bringing some style to the front door, a space that can often get neglected, even though it sets the tone for the rest of your home.

Here, they can make a characterful finishing touch.

Bulkhead Lighting For Commercial Spaces

As well as using them throughout the home, bulkhead lights are also popular choices for various businesses, again thanks to their practicality and durability as well as their distinctive visuals.

Office Lighting With Character

Modern offices thrive on unique interior design that encourages employee creativity, productivity and well-being. Lighting can play an important role in these factors – bulkhead lights are particularly good at making offices feel less formal with a warmer ambience and new elements of personality.

Memorable Restaurant Lights

Restaurants, bars and cafes can also benefit from bulkhead lights, whether your establishment uses them in dining spaces, bathrooms or for improving exteriors. Here, they’ll help make your business more memorable, solidifying the brand’s image and character. They are the ideal choice for uniquely decorated spaces with an edgier feel.

There really aren’t many limits to how you can style bulkhead lights or where you can incorporate them! These simple designs shine with versatility and will bring something unique to any interior style.

If any of the pieces we’ve showcased here have piqued your interest, check out our complete bulkhead range and shop your favourite.

Header image credit: 3D Boffin