My bedroom just had one of those standard square ceiling lamps that have been produced in exactly the same way since at least the 1960s: white, the size of an occasional pillow, and with fine scroll design painted along the edge that never went with anything and never will.As previously blogged about, I painted my bedroom, and the next step was to find a light fixture that contributed to the vaguely "hotel room in Nice circa 1908" vibe I have going, but was bright and fun like the paint on the walls*. I'm really big on waking up in a room that makes me feel happy, and wanted something that would be bright and cheerful in the dark Canadian winter, but fun in the summer too.
This lamp is from the IKEA children's section. If I cut all the beads off, or replace them with more sedate ones, I could get a grown-up look from it. I like how the not-quite-matched beads look, though, and it goes well with the rest of the colour scheme. Besides that, the scrolls go with my furniture, and there's not a single speck of brass on it (I hate brass).
I did the wiring myself, with only one tech support call to my brother Rob, who knows much more about these things (in my defence, the wiring in that socket looks safe, but a little non-standard as to colour coding). The worst part — once the wire colour mystery was solved, anyhow — was trying to get the cover at the top of the fixture to hold all the wires in place. I took down the lamp just this morning, rearranged some of the beading, duct taped the lamp wire into place under the cover, and then replaced the whole thing. I'm still not confident it won't start to sag in the next 24-72 hours, but we'll see.
* This photo shows the paint colour better than previous ones, but it's still too blue. The actual colour has some green in it — hence the ocean resort theme.
