As nowadays you can buy so many different types of LED filament bulbs and all sorts of chord sets for pendant lamps, there is quite a big temptation for the DIY-minded folks to hang their own designs instead of buying a ready-made piece of pendant light or chandelier. At least, I could not resist, so I ended up creating lamps with non-conventional lampshades too.
First, I have just bought a triple chord set and three 400lm LED filament bulbs. As we needed a quick solution, I have just started to play around with weaving the chords. Better than nothing, but I guess I will eventually change this for something slightly more sophisticated. While you don't need to have a lampshade for this kind of bulbs, 1200 lumens aren't too much for a bigger room like ours.
Next time I've just got a couple of vintage-looking colanders from IKEA and all the other stuff from a local DIY store. All I had to do is to drill a bigger hole in the colanders for the fittings; plus cut and connect the cables. First I opted for conventional size 1000lm filament LED light bulbs, but these were just too bright and glaring, so I replaced them with three 400lm bulbs – of the smallest size you could buy.
Thinking about the next lamp I needed to install I was quite sure that I would use the surplus dry cleaner wire hangers we accumulated during the last couple of years, so I started to tinker with them. As it was intended for our low-ceiling bedchamber, I just needed something small and simple with just a single light bulb, so I just bought an IKEA Hemma chord set, a big Lunnom bulb again, and started to sculpture something out of my wire hangers, fixing them with small wires which were sold with dustbin bags. Although it ended up as a rather abstract –from some perspectives quite chaotic– wireframe lampshade, it projects quite interesting shadows onto the ceiling.
I hope these photos will give you some inspiration to build your own lamps one day.
