Choosing The Right Lamp Shade Pendant: a house log

I kinda want to jump on The Voice bandwagon. Not in the sense that I want my shot at getting Adam Levine to turn his chair for me – at which point I would look him dead in the eye and say “keep your hands off my woman, Levine!” (it never hurts to lay clear boundaries with a guy like him). I want to jump on the bandwagon in the sense that The Choice (spinny chairs meets dating), The Taste (cooking) and The Face (modeling) have.

Only my spin-off would be called The Shade and it would be a competition to find “the next strong light for Clara’s big girl room.” And no one would watch it.

We knew we hoped to swap out the wood-tastic ceiling fan for something more Clara-friendly (we have used a table fan in her room for nearly three years and have never needed an overhead fan). We came to the idea of doing a shade pendant after realizing that it would give us plenty of options (texture, color, etc) while not hanging too low (a chandelier would likely get in the way) but still illuminating the room nicely.

First we debated choosing one of ours, but since most of those are fairly patterned (and we already have plenty of pattern going on in Clara’s room) we chose to check out a few other go-to sources, like craigslist and a local shop where we have found a bunch of other lights we enjoy on a budget (aka The Decorating Outlet here in Richmond). Craigslist had nada, but our local Decorating Outlet had a lot. Not only did we find one shade that we liked there, we found four options – all within the $35-40 range.

Here was the line up of what we found:

1. Team Navy: A solid deep blue (to tie in with her curtains) with no pattern at all
2. Team Purple Damask: A quite subtle pattern in a purple tone that works nicely between the blues and reds in the room
3. Team Neutral: A natural burlap-ish shade that could bring a pleasant organic texture into the space
4. Team Chevron: Think of him as the contestant who is not afraid to take risks – this one has a trendy, bold pattern in a navy and white color scheme

The Decorating Outlet gives you one business day to make returns, so we rushed home for the audition portion of our show. This meant I simply held up each shade over the existing fan light (which is not as bright as a hanging pendant would be, but helps us imagine how each one would look). Let us check them out in reverse order…

Team Chevron was fairly cool on its own, but our fears that bringing one more bold pattern into the room were confirmed. It likely could’ve worked, but it made us fearful of other patterns and prints that we might have to nix down the line (remember we still have big plans for the blank span of wall between those two windows, and we do not want the shade to compete). So then it was on to Team Neutral…

This one likely could have worked too, but in person it felt too, well, neutral. So without much hesitation, we invited Team Purple to the stage.

This picture is not the best representation of it because it in fact looked quite pleasant with the lights off. But when the light came on, the purple tone and damask pattern got kind of lost and it in fact looked a lot like Team Neutral. Too bad. I truly hoped to like it.

And then there was one remaining contestant…

Even though Team Navy felt like the “safest” of the picks, it was our instinct all along. And although it looks a little dark, remember that our light kit will put off a lot more wattage than the old fan light does in this picture. Knowing our future plans for adding in other art and accents to the wall between the windows, we simply felt that a shade without pattern was the right way to go. And even though it does not looks especially exciting in the picture above, in person it was a fairly obvious winner. So we were both convinced within a matter of minutes that it was the choice – er, the voice – er, the shade.

With the auditions over, we moved on to the battle round (i.e. where I wrestle with the heavy fan to remove it from the ceiling). Luckily I emerged victorious.

The brought in bonus to picking the navy shade is that it was also the cheapest of the bunch – simply $34. And to further save on the cost of this project, The Decorating Outlet sells their “damaged” pendant hardware (for hanging the shade) at half price. The only “damage” to the one we picked up is that the light kit had already been cut (so it would not work in a room with a high ceiling) but since it was still longer than we’d need for Clara’s room (we in fact snipped it a bit shorter) we were more than glad to snatch it up for $25.

And since The Voice consistently loses me during the live rounds anyways, let us skip our show ahead to the finale. Now’s where you picture The Voice theme song: “This is The Shade!”

For a total of $60 (the light kit came with the canopy too) we are truly glad with our two-light pendant. I personally enjoy that the dark navy color helps balance out all the pink in the room so it feels calming and not too Crazy-Pink-Palace. Plus, it subtly complements the other blue items in the room nicely without demanding too much attention. In other words, it is more like Adam or Blake in jeans and a t-shirt (Cee-Lo it most certainly is not).

Of course all that truly matters is that Clara likes it, so let us get to her reaction to our winner, which was: “Is that mine? Can I touch it? Is that mine for my big girl room? I think it is shiny and fairly like a pebble.”

We ended up putting two 75-watt CFL bulbs in there, which also means that (despite the dark shade) the room is still plenty bright. So Clara will have no problem hosting late night tea parties or stuffed animal sleepovers. Whew. So whaddya think? Does my concept for The Shade have legs? No? Did not think so. I guess it and The Choice (which I think already got cancelled) will simply be forgotten together…

Psst- Sherry’s having some lively with East Coast Creative by volunteering as one of their bloggy helpers (that is a technical term by the way). So if you are a blogger and would like to get paired up with $herdog for their little Creating With The Stars competition, you can enter your best project here for a chance to be one of their 12 final contestants.