Spicing up with lamp shades
What you need to know:
Lamp shades are frames that fit on the top of a lamp and cover the lighting source. They can be used to both control lighting and decorate a room. Lydia Ainomugisha explores how.
The first place I went looking for lamp shades was in a furniture shop. I moved through so many furniture shops on Jinja and Kampala Road sure I’d find them there but they were not. Only Nina Interiors had a few made of cloth.
Finally, someone directed me to an electronic shop along Kampala Road, and that was where I found some.
So my search turned to electronic shops and indeed, there they were. I found even more varieties in downtown Kampala electronic shops though. Lesson one, therefore: They are more electronic than furnishing accessories.
How to use them
Lamp shades can be found in varieties of glass, cloth, and other various fabrics and forms of paper. Ronald Kaboyo, who has been selling lamp shades for five years at Ssebagala and Sons Electro Centre says lamp shades vary in sizes, shapes, colours and texture because they are made for different places within a house.
“Some are wider and bigger and these best suit the living room because living rooms need a supply of more light while the bedroom ones are more mormally curved and at times in dim colours,” he explains.
Because of the different artworks they are made of, lamp shades can serve as decorations in the house.
Gloria Kawuuma, an interior designer, tips that instead of filling up the house with flowers, you can use a lamp shade as a flower. “The flower wouldn’t only be doing away with the usual ordinary boring bulb, but also serving as decoration,” explains Kavuma.
Most of them are circular around the bulb, but other shapes like kites and stars for baby bedrooms are also available. These lighten up babies’ rooms but can also be potential baby sitters as they keep flushing different colours of lights. Lamp shades also reduce glare hence protecting eyes from direct light as you do not directly look at the bulbs.
