The quest to unmask the fundamental nature of dark matter 
has inspired a vast worldwide program of complementary experiments, 
including direct-detection, indirect-detection, and collider searches.
Direct-detection searches over the past few decades, using 
technologies such as large liquid noble chambers, have been largely 
focused on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles in the ~10 GeV – 1 TeV
mass range. The absence of any conclusive discovery, along with 
various theoretical developments and certain astrophysical 
observations, has recently motivated the direct detection community to
broaden our experimental program to search for dark matter particle 
candidates in the <10 GeV mass range. Solid state detectors provide 
many advantages for such searches. This talk will introduce the 
current and next generation of these detectors, including phonon- and 
ionization-based semiconductor crystals, cryogenic scintillating 
calorimeters, Charge-Coupled Devices, and exotic condensed matter 
systems. It will also summarize the discovery potential of solid-state
detectors for various low-mass dark matter candidates, including dark 
photons, axion-like particles, and lightly-ionizing particles.