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“Lamp shades really pulls a room together,”
said Mary Anne Laccabue, owner of A Shade Better,
a lamp and shade shop in Clearwater, Fla. “They’ve
come a long way” from the 1960s, when lamp
shades were largely functional, she said.
Laccabue and Kate Elkins, manager of the shop
have seen all kinds of things come through their
door. The same tired lamp shades, decades old.
Lamps with hazardous wiring. Lamps with shades
the wrong style, the wrong shape, the wrong color.
Laccabue and Elkins offered this advice on choosing
lamp shades for those who would like things to
be a shade different in their homes”
The biggest mistake people make when buying lamp
shades is trying to choose one without the lamp
in hand. “They come in with no lamp, without
the old lamp shade , with no dimensions,”
Laccabue said. “They ask, “What do
I need?’ or they say, “I’ll
know it when I see it.’ ” Save yourself
disappointment and repeated trips by taking the
lamp to the store so you can try a variety of
sizes, shapes and colors.
All the lamp shades in a room need not match.
“They should coordinate,” Elkins said:
You don’t want 10 styles and colors. If
the lamp shades are generally of a similar style
and in the same color palette, they’ll look
good even though they’re not identical.
Some people think that lamp shades must be white
to provide maximum light for reading. Not so,
Elkins said. Light easily passes through a white
or light-colored lamp shade and is diffused throughout
the room. If you have good ambient lighting in
the rest of the room, darker lamp shades can be
a better choice because it concentrates the light,
providing good illumination for reading.
Be open to something besides the cylinder shade
your lamp came with. “People think, ‘If
that’s the shade that was on the lamp when
I bought it, that’s the style that belongs
there,’ ” Elkins said. The cylinder
was ubiquitous in the 1960s and ‘70s, but
now it looks dated. Try different shapes and styles.
• A white lamp shade gets lost against a
white or light-colored wall. Consider at least
a deeper beige tone that won’t disappear.
If the lamp is an antique, a white shade may look
stark and new. Choose off-white or another warm
color instead.
• The larger the lamp shade, the more care
you need to take in choosing a color. “A
mammoth red shade” on a red lamp shade may
not be your best choice, Elkins said. But you
can add trim or fringe to a neutral shade to pick
up the colors in the lamp base or room. “It
gives some color, it’s less boring, without
taking away the light in the room,” Elkins
said.
• The bottom of lampshades should be 6 to
8 inches above your shoulder as you sit beside
it. That depends on the height of your tabletop,
how low you sit in your sofa or how high your
bed is. The height keeps the glare of the bulb
out of your eye.
n Replace the cord. A black cord dangling against
a white wall is ugly. It’s easy to have
the cord replaced with one that matches your decor.
• Have your lamp rewired. “I’ve
got a floor lamp sitting here, and the wiring
is just unbelievable,” Kate Elkins, of a
Florida lamp shade shop, said. “I just bent
the cord, and it broke.” If your lamp has
been around for a while — a flea market
find, a longtime family possession — have
it rewired for safety’s sake.
• A lamp shop can replace a wooden or bronze
base that is broken or damaged. Shops can disassemble
and clean crystal lamps that have become cloudy
inside and restore them to a sparkling-clear appearance.
• Add a finishing touch with a finial, the
decorative knob that holds the shade in place.
“People are amazed what a simple finial
will add to the overall look,” Mary Anne
Laccabue, of the shop, said. But don’t put
a crystal finial on a brass lamp because you’ve
got crystal elsewhere in the room. Match the finial
to the lamp in motif, color and material.
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