Entry No. 66 — the Portland file — filed under: lightbulbs
Sunlan Lighting
Kay Newell — the Lightbulb Lady, per OPB — has run Sunlan with her two sons since 1989, outlasting most of the businesses that shared North Mississippi with her when she arrived. The store stocks hundreds of specialty bulbs: full-spectrum neodymium for the five months of Portland gloom, plus a category the shop files under 'Ancient History' covering decorative krypton and xenon in shapes and bases nobody manufactures anymore. Newell draws her own newspaper ads, single-panel comics about the private lives of light bulbs — one bulb handing another its car keys after a beer, a father and son at a grave captioned 'your light is remembered' — and keeps the portfolios behind the counter to hand out as prints. The windows are the free part: a rotating lit-up arrangement that turns into a full holiday installation each December, memorable enough that vandalizing it in 2023 made the local news. Bring in something broken and she will name it, tell you why it failed, and sell you the right replacement for less than the internet charges.
→ Three more weird outdoor & roadside oddities in Portland — never the same twice
The story
Kay Newell opened Sunlan Lighting at 3901 N Mississippi Ave in 1989 and has run it since as a family and woman-owned shop — the store’s own contact page lists her son Dennis Newell as a co-owner. OPB, which built a segment around her, uses the name everyone else does: the Lightbulb Lady. The Mississippi strip she opened onto is not the one outside the door now, and that gap is the subject of “The Sun’s Only Rival,” a documentary short by Lou S. Chain and Lisa Petersen that screened in OPB’s 2016 Oregon Lens festival; Chain’s framing was that as Portland modernizes, Sunlan becomes “more and more of a rare glimpse into what once was.”
The stock is the argument. Sunlan carries hundreds of bulbs across a range most hardware stores gave up on: full-spectrum neodymium lamps for the gray months — Newell writes that she found neodymium in 1991 and converted her own house — plus miniature and appliance bulbs, refrigerator-style A15s, night-light parts, Edison filaments, holiday strings with real sockets, and a category filed under “Ancient History” for krypton and xenon incandescents, which burn cooler than halogen with comparable color rendering and stopped being available in July 2023. They also sell the unglamorous half — wire by the foot, sockets, bushings, candle covers — and will special-order and ship.
Newell draws Sunlan’s newspaper ads herself: single-panel comics about the private lives of light bulbs. One bulb hands another its car keys after a beer. A father and son stand at a grave, captioned “your light is remembered.” One drawing came out crooked, so she gave the bulb a bandage and a sick expression instead of redrawing it. She keeps the books of them behind the counter and hands out prints. Her stated reason, to Willamette Week: “I want people to remember my ad.”
What it's like
The windows come first and cost nothing — a lit arrangement of bulbs that reads from the sidewalk at any hour, including well after closing. Inside it’s a small, dense storefront where the transaction runs backwards from a hardware store: you produce the dead bulb, someone identifies it by base and diameter, tells you what killed it, then sells you the replacement, frequently for less than the internet quoted. Customers consistently describe getting a lighting lecture they didn’t ask for and were glad to have. Five minutes if you only want to look; half an hour the moment you ask a question. Bring the actual bulb, or a clear photo of the fixture with something for scale. Leave the dog at home.
The move: Dig the strangest dead bulb out of your apartment — the one in the range hood, the fixture the last tenant left — and get to Sunlan before 5:30 on a weekday with it in your pocket. Let Kay identify it and explain what killed it, buy the replacement plus one full-spectrum neodymium for whichever of you has the worse desk lamp, then walk south down Mississippi for dinner and come back past the lit window after dark.
📍 Before you go Monday through Friday 8am-5:30pm, Saturday 10am-5pm, closed Sunday — this is a daytime stop, though the windows read fine from the sidewalk at night. Phone 503-281-0453. Closed New Year's Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, with 10am-4pm hours on Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day. Free to walk in; five minutes if you only want the windows, thirty if you start asking questions. It sits at the quieter north end of the Mississippi strip, so pair it with dinner rather than making it the destination. Street parking only.
- 📍 Portland
- 💸 Free
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Outdoors
Where: 3901 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97227
Hours: Added 2026-08-26 — confirm current hours before you go.
Pair it with
- Paxton Gate PDX — Three blocks north on the same sidewalk, and the same instinct sorted differently — taxidermy and beetles under glass instead of filaments.
- The 1905 — Half a block off Mississippi on N Shaver, essentially around the corner, and it opens for jazz sets about when Sunlan’s door locks at 5:30.
- Mississippi Records — Eight blocks north on N Albina — another shop that stayed put through the strip’s rewrite and still sells obsolete formats on purpose.
More weird in Portland
Good to know
When is it open?
Monday through Friday 8am–5:30pm and Saturday 10am–5pm, closed Sunday — this is a daytime errand. Closed New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, with short 10am–4pm hours on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day. The lit windows work from the sidewalk whenever.
What does it cost to visit?
Nothing to walk in and look. Bulbs are the only spend, and reviewers repeatedly note the prices undercut what they had found online for the same odd globe or fixture lamp. Special orders and shipping are available if your shape isn’t on the shelf.
What should I bring?
The dead bulb itself, bagged if it’s fragile. Failing that, a photo of the fixture and the base. Sunlan’s bulb-identifier page explains the system — a letter for shape, a number for diameter in eighths of an inch — so an A19 is 2 3/8 inches across, which is worth knowing before you guess.
What’s the winter angle?
Full-spectrum neodymium is what people come in for once the gray sets in; the shop sells it as a passive alternative to a light box and also stocks a book-sized LED therapy lamp. December brings the other seasonal run: holiday strings, replacement bulbs in both LED and incandescent, and sockets to repair the strings you already own.
Any etiquette I should know?
Two things. Their own reviews page flags that the owner is highly allergic to dogs, so leave yours at home. And it’s street parking only, at the quiet north end of the Mississippi strip — calmer than the bar stretch to the south, but the spaces turn over more slowly too.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: Official site · opb.org · wweek.com
last checked: 2026-08-26