By popular demand I was asked to write a post on home decor this week! It just so happens that I’d been meaning to do something about the sad lampshade I had on my desk. Over years of moving it into and out of storage during college, some odd stains and dents had really distressed the shade, and not in that cute way people are always looking for. I could have just bought a new one, but I really wanted to find a way to reuse the one I already had.

To make amends with the stains, a coat of white paint would do the trick. But the dents were another issue. I decided that using a pattern on the lamp shade would help to mask the dents and give the lamp a nice bit of color! It was on to designing a pattern.

I came up with this green, dotted, ombré pattern that fades from dark green to light green from the bottom to the top of the lamp shade. I like this pattern because it’s clean and simple, and it allows light to come through the shade because it’s mainly white. You can use paint to make any sort if cute decoration on a shade: chevron, solid, stripe… But make sure to remember that light colors always work best for a lamp shade, otherwise you don’t get much light when you turn it on!

For a step by step tutorial, follow my instructions below!

DIY Ombré Dot Painted Lamp Shade

Supplies:

Lamp shade
Newspaper or paper towels
Paint (I used acrylic) – white, black, green
Paint brush with round end
Plate for paint mixing

1. Lay out your lamp shade on some paper towels or newspaper to keep your table clean. Grab a paintbrush and your paint.

2. Hold the shade by the inner wires to prevent any more “dentifying”, and paint a thin coat of white paint over the entire surface. If there are dark stains on your shade wait for the first layer of paint to dry and paint another coat. Allow all coats of paint to dry.

3. Decide on a pattern and try it out on a piece of paper. You don’t want to mess up your shade with a pattern you don’t like!

To copy my pattern, start by mixing the green paint with some white on a paper plate. This will be the lightest shade. Use the end of the paint brush and dip it into the paint. Start placing dots sporadically all over the bottom of the shade with less dots more openly spaced as you move up the shade. The more random it is and the more sizes of dots you make, the better. Continue your way around the entire shade until you have come back to the start.

4. Use the green paint now by itself and begin to fill in more areas of the bottom of the shade with dots using this color. The idea is that the bottom of the shade is darker and more concentrated, so make sure to keep the green dots more focused toward the bottom of the shade.

5. Mix the green paint with just a touch of black (a little goes a long way). Use this color and paint dots just along the bottom, really filling in the white spaces.

6. After I had finished with all of the colors I went back and filled in more space with the light and regular green. You can really make the shade as full of color as you want, but I would recommend this pattern to get a good ombré effect:

Bottom 1/5: All colors of dots heavily layered
Next 1/5: Light green and green dots heavily layered
Next 1/5: Light green and green dots with some open white space
Next 1/5: light green dots with open spaces
Last 1/5: Mostly open white space with some light green dots

Hope you love this project, it’s a nice easy one to do while watching TV or hanging out with friends! In total it only took me about 2 hours including drying time and cost me nothing, as I already owned the supplies. If you only need the paint and brushes it should cost around $6-8.