How to Build a LEGO Night Light

Here’s a fun LEGO building idea! Challenge kids to design their own working LEGO night light.

It’s always fun when you can build a LEGO gadget that really works! This is fun for a rainy day at home, or as a building challenge for a LEGO club. You can build a LEGO night light with whatever bricks you have on hand, as long as you have some translucent bricks or windows.

This post was updated in October 2022.

These night lights are fun to build and use!  We chose battery powered tea lights for the light. They are very inexpensive at craft stores, and the bulb does not get hot at all.

You can use your LEGO night lights as true night lights, or just turn them on to make the evening more cheerful. The days are definitely getting shorter as we head into fall. It’s fun to have some cozy lights!

Janie and I built three different LEGO night light styles. First, we made these two lights.

We started with an 8 x 8 plate for each light. Then we added 2 x 2 round bricks to make little feet. Copy our design, or come up with your own! This project is very open-ended.

You can leave the back open, or you can make a door for the light.

If you use tea lights like ours, you’ll need to be able to remove them to switch them on and off.

To make the working door, we used a 1 x 2 light gray plate with two clips and a 1 x 2 red plate with a handle on the side.

It’s fun to be able to open the door to put the light inside!

Then one of my sons suggested making a castle night light, so I did. I love how it turned out!

So fun! The colored translucent bricks don’t show as much color variation with the tea light, but they still look really cool.

Recommended Bricks:

• 8 x 8 plates – these are the perfect size!
• 1 x 2 bricks in translucent colors
• 2 x 2 slopes in translucent colors

We bought our battery powered tea lights at Michael’s.  They are not very expensive, but this still wouldn’t probably make a great night light for *every* night.  Not sure how long they last, but it isn’t terribly long.  But still a fun project!

Also, the tea lights do not get hot at all.  We left the top open on our LEGO® lights, but I don’t even think that that would be necessary because the lights really do not generate heat.

Need more LEGO building ideas? Browse all of our LEGO projects here.

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