Fifty Shades of Grey - IKEA style

No, I will not be going to the cinema to see Fifty Shades Of Grey. I would rather drool over IKEA's inspirational blog Livet Hemma*

ARÖD lamp, MÄSTERBY step stool

BORRBY lantern, ALVINE/GÄSPA/GURLI/SMÅNATE bedlinen

MÄSTERBY step stool, DINERA coffee cup & saucer

 

STOCKHOLM candlesticks, HASSELNÖT plant pot, RIBBA picture frames

- still life by Frida Ramstedt

 

IKEA PS pedestal

 

LIATORP glass-fronted armoire/cabinet re-styled by Pella Hedeby

 

FABIAN shelves

MALM chest of drawers

STOCKSUND ottoman/footstool

 

HURDAL sliding doors & MULIG clothes rail

HEMNES wash-stand, EKNE wall mirror, FRÄCK shaving mirror

STOCKSUND sofa

KOLJA wall mirrors, MALM mirrored chest of drawers, IKEA PS 2012 chair, PORTIS coat stand

SIGURD bench, VANADIN pendant lamps

SKOVEL wall clock, HEDERLIG champagne glasses

UDDEN trolley table, RÅDIG espresso maker

 

NORNÄS bench

 

STOCKHOLM wing-back armchair

* Livet Hemma (= Life at Home) is only available on IKEA's Swedish web page, but nothing should stop you from checking it out for inspiration. Famous Nordic stylists and bloggers contribute to this inspirational blog so it's a great place to pick up style tips. You can do so much more with IKEA's stuff than what they show us at Neasden and Croydon..

Shortlisted Pendant Lights

In the search for hallway lighting I have at least determined what I do not like among the vaster than vast range available today... Such as stripped-back versions which look as if someone has ripped the fabric off the shade and left the framework exposed like a cage. Hm.. naked bulb: no. Ripped up lampshade: no thanks. Then there is anything with intricate detail which will inevitably gather lots of dust. I am not a cleaning fanatic, but I do have an inner dust-gremlin which hates the idea of adding dust-prone areas.

So I think I'm down to two main groups of pendant lights:

Metal lampshades in either black or copper/brass/bronze on an old-style flex. I like the combination of Bestlite's matt black shade with a little brass detailing around the top.

Bestlite BL9-M Black & Brass. Available from David Village Lighting at £220.15

 

 Dokka black by Northern Lighting available from The Lollipop Shoppe at £176

I also like a 'vintaged', or perhaps I should call it 'slightly abused' brass shade - tarnished rather than shiny (tarnished brass has a beautiful colour).

Brooklyn brass-coloured metal pendant with pewter fixture from Industville at £69

 And then the combination of the two, which would be a matt black shade with a brushed golden inside (Tom Dixon's designs are great, but his lamps are everywhere now).

Oslo pendant light (haha, I didn't know there were so many lamps named after my home town!)

Pitted against the above is the concept of the slightly coloured glass shade (clear glass looks beautiful in photos but the brightness would look cold in our chalky white hallway).

Goal small pendant light in recycled glass by House Doctor. £24 from Idyll Home

Fog pendant light by Front for Zero lighting. Sadly unaffordable. £540 from Viaduct

Amp pendant lights by Normann Copenhagen available from The Lollipop Shoppe at £90.

Ellipse and Circle grey mirror-effect pendant lights by House Doctor (ever so slightly reminiscent of Normann Copenhagen...) £110 each from Idyll Home

Mid-century glass pendant light with copper bulb fitting, spotted in Heal's. Ca £140

Birger Dahl - Rediscovered

In my search for hallway lighting I also remembered a quietly elegant number which I had glimpsed in the Norwegian press last year. It is one of two lamps designed by interior-architect and industrial designer Birger Dahl in the 1950's. Dahl was a representative of 'Scandinavian Design' , a Nordic modernist ethos where design focused on the needs of ordinary people instead of a small moneyed elite. Dahl's two best known lamp designs, 'Dokka' ('the doll') and 'Jenta' ('the girl') were exhibited at the large travelling exhibition 'Design in Scandinavia' which toured the US and Canada in 1954-57 and which was pivotal in introducing Scandinavian/Nordic design to North America. 'Dokka' was awarded the golden medal at the Milan Triennale 1954.

Photo: Northern Lighting

 

Photo: Northern Lighting

 

Photo: Northern Lighting

Photo: e-mag DECO

Dokka is now manufactured by Northern Lighting and is available to buy in the UK at Holloways of Ludlow.

Hallway Lighting - The Balance Between Esthetics and Practicality

Having had our hallway and staircase up two floors redecorated it's time to focus on the lighting. We need a ceiling light for the hallway and the 1st floor landing. The 2nd floor has recessed spotlights, so we don't have to think about it - and a good thing it is too, as the ceiling up there is really high and inaccessible.

I'm wondering whether I should try to find a light that will suit both the hallway and the upstairs landing, but the two areas have quite different needs, so I'm not sure it would be the best solution. The ground floor of our house has a slightly lower ceiling than upstairs, and the hallway light hangs at the bottom of the stairs, so I'm dithering between a pendant light and a flush ceiling light. From a practical point of view the latter would probably work rather well, since the ceiling fixture is positioned more or less at the bottom of the stairs and a pendant lamp feels as if it hangs right in front of you as you come down the stairs. We also have a glass-panelled door leading in to the sitting room to the side of the stairs and the brightness of the light shining through the door is a bit unnerving when you are sitting there in cosy mood lighting. However, it is not easy to find an attractive ceiling light, there seems to be a very narrow selection available - mostly an inverted glass dome set in a rim of chrome or other metal. Jim Lawrence, the Suffolk firm, makes beautiful lamps and I know from experience that the quality and service is excellent. But I don't think we want to go as traditional as these...

 Left to right: Jim Lawrence 'Tavistock', 'Gladstone' and 'Grosvenor'

From an esthetic point of view there is lots to chose from. I am quite taken with a style of retro pendant light where the lightshade is transparent glass, with an old-fashioned flex and a brass or bronze rose. These look beautiful with a filament bulb showing through the glass. However, two of my family members have trouble with their eyesight and therefore find naked lightbulbs very uncomfortable to the eye. I wouldn't want them to have to shade their eyes when they come to visit. And again, there is that glass panelled door into the sitting room - this kind of lighting would probably be quite unnerving viewed from the sofa...

The middle road, and easier to find, would be to opt for a semi-translucent or opaque lightshade on a pendant light. Porcelain, frosted glass or metal.

                                                           Bestlite pendant lights

 Left to right: Flos 'Mini Glo' pendant light, Gregg ovoid pendant light

'Leoni' pendant glass light

'Lumière' ceiling light

Louis Poulsen 'Aeros' suspension light

Norm Architects pendant light

Marset 'Hazy Day' frosted glass suspension light

Tom Dixon 'Cell' Short brass pendant light

My Colour Is A Deeper Shade Of White

We have just reclaimed our house from the painters after six days of dust everywhere, paint pots left open (I mean open! why?) overnight in the dining room and chappies who consistently turned up 1 hour later than they said they would in the mornings. It's bliss to be on our own again.

Our hallway, staircase and upstairs landings have been transformed from a grubby magnolia peppered with scratches and dents to a soothing, unified deeper shade of white from the Little Green paint range. Except our painter chappies refused to paint with Little Green, claiming that it would take them twice as long as with 'normal' (read 'industrial') paint... By the time my husband found these painters (who came recommended by a friend) we had lived here just over a year and were starting to despair of all the work we still had left to do on the house. So we agreed reluctantly to forgo Little Green, which despite its lovely densely pigmented colours and smell-free characteristics even we had found a tad slow to paint with. OK. OK, we would opt for a 'faster' (ie with higher spreadability and opacity) paint for the hallway and stairs. The painters tried it on by suggesting a washable paint with a slight sheen 'very popular in school buildings'. A slight sheen? No thank you. No way. Our house is not a public institution which needs to be scrubbed down every day. I found a 'durable matt' paint by Johnstone's paints, which our local paint shop mixed up into the Little Green colour that we had always planned to have. 'Linen Wash' - the same as we painted our living room last year. A whitish, oatmealy, unbleached linen-y shade.

Somehow the painters managed to steamroll us into having gloss paint on the banisters, windowsills and other woodwork. I'm not quite sure how they did that, since we aren't very keen on shiny paints and had planned for a satin finish. Again, our desperate wish to finally get the job done went in the painters' favour, and they brought gallons of white gloss into our house. Oh yes, apparently they think it is much more durable than satin. Arghhh. They told us the glossiness will 'flatten down' ie lose a little of its shine with time, but I suspect it will not. I wonder if other people feel they have to accommodate their painters or if it was just us?

Anyhow, our hallway and stairs are now clean and light and we are very happy with the colour of the walls. Funnily enough, yesterday I took Inredningshjälpen's advice and tried a little colour quiz on Swedish wallpaper firm Rebelwalls' website. My favourite colour turned out to be...

white

so we're all right :)