Electron installation failure on Linux Mint 18

I'm trying to install the latest stable build on my Linux Mint distro. I'm getting the following output and haven't figured out what's wrong. Note: this is just me trying to install it according to the instruction given in documentation.

This is on a fresh install of nodejs 9 with npm. The Linux Mint install is also fresh (only been using it 2 days now).

$ npm i -D electron@latest
npm WARN checkPermissions Missing write access to /home/nolan/node_modules
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/nolan/package.json'
npm WARN nolan No description
npm WARN nolan No repository field.
npm WARN nolan No README data
npm WARN nolan No license field.

npm ERR! path /home/nolan/node_modules
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! syscall access
npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/home/nolan/node_modules'
npm ERR!  { Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/home/nolan/node_modules'
npm ERR!   stack: 'Error: EACCES: permission denied, access \'/home/nolan/node_modules\'',
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   syscall: 'access',
npm ERR!   path: '/home/nolan/node_modules' }
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/nolan/.npm/_logs/2018-04-06T12_29_36_255Z-debug.log

Then when running as root as it says to try doing I get this output:

$ sudo npm i -D electron@latest

> electron@1.8.4 postinstall /home/nolan/node_modules/electron
> node install.js

/home/nolan/node_modules/electron/install.js:47
  throw err
  ^

Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/home/nolan/node_modules/electron/electron-tmp-download-17793-1523017991786'
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/nolan/package.json'
npm WARN nolan No description
npm WARN nolan No repository field.
npm WARN nolan No README data
npm WARN nolan No license field.

npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! electron@1.8.4 postinstall: `node install.js`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Failed at the electron@1.8.4 postinstall script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/nolan/.npm/_logs/2018-04-06T12_33_12_101Z-debug.log