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Flush mounts, pendants, sconces, chandeliers: The options for overhead lighting are anything but few, and thank goodness. Sifting through them is like a treasure hunt for the design lover, part inspiring distraction and part thrill (when you find The One). That said, if you're furnishing a whole room or even a whole home from scratch, finding the perfect fixture or ten of them becomes yet another to-do on the checklist—and a costly one at that. But you kind of need lights, right? (Especially if there's a gaping hole where the previous owners had a ceiling fan.) Which is why you should definitely know about these $4 porcelain light sockets, which are that perfect blend of simple design that purely gets the job done and simple design that's actually nice to look at. Leave them up until you can budget out the fixtures you actually want to buy, or just keep them in place for all time (we wouldn't blame you).
Besides being so insanely low in price, these light sockets also readily accessible no matter where you live: Home Depot, Lowe's, and Amazon all carry multiple versions, none of which crest the $10 mark. (You can get plastic ones for as low as a dollar or two, but we recommend "splurging" on the porcelain type for more like $5.) They might be dubbed "lamp holders" or "ceiling sockets" or even an "outlet box mount," depending on the store. Some will have pull chains to click the bulb on and off; others will have an outlet designed right into the slope of the shape. If you are confident with electrical wiring, feel free to install them yourself: Flip the breaker off, strip and screw the exposed wires coming out of the hole in the ceiling to the back of the socket, then screw the socket right over the hole. If you are not proficient with wiring, don't try that—surf Angie's List for a well-rated electrician to come by and install them all for you in a morning instead.
Once installed, the little shiny cones will blend right in with your ceilings and need only to be topped off with a light bulb. Alternatively, of course you could spray-paint them before installing: A shellacked black? The same dusty blue as your ceiling? Brass or pewter? Totally up to you. And yes, you can simply screw an incandescent bulb right into the piece, as their frosted glass makes them easy on the eyes if you glance up. It's also a great time to try one of those decorative bulbs you've probably seen gracing exposed bulb fixtures on magazine covers: An oversize frosted bulb or a gold-dipped one would both look great on this little $5 lifesaver of a fixture.
