Easily Give A Budget-Friendly Lamp A Designer Look With An IKEA Hack

Lighting is one of those home decor essentials that are always worth buying when you visit an IKEA store, especially if the pendant light or table lamp in question is cheap, on sale, or you have a DIY idea in mind. Just because you don't have a Martha Stewart-level budget for home decoration, it doesn't mean you can't cultivate an impressive sense of style. Great design taste is really just about knowing what clever tweaks to make in a room or finding decorative items that add character. And that's something that can be achieved without spending too much.

For example, you can take the brown recycled paper ZEBRASÄV pendant lamp from IKEA and give it a checkerboard interior and painted exterior, transforming it into a stylish new fixture that's guaranteed to boost the vibe of any room. This wallet-friendly light costs almost $12, and you can easily remodel it in under a few hours with minimal tools or materials. All you need is a steady hand, a paintbrush, a ruler, and two complementary or contrasting paint colors.

Start turning this discount lamp into a unique home feature by wiping it down with a clean dust cloth to remove any dust and debris. Next, place your ruler inside the shade, running top to bottom. Grab a pencil. Using the ruler as your straight edge, draw evenly spaced vertical lines down the interior of the shade. To create the checkerboard pattern, mark measured dots along the vertical lines with your pencil, demarcating where each square starts and ends. Use a paintbrush to fill in each box with an alternating paint color. Then, choose one of the colors to paint the outside of the shade with. Once the paint is dry to the touch, fit the light kit to the lamp (if needed) and get a bulb, and you're done!

Other creative ways to give this lampshade a fresh new look include finishing the painted squares — or the exterior — with silver or gold leaf, or switching out the colored paint for glitter paint. You can also explore other patterns to deviate from the checkerboard aesthetic — stripes, zig-zags, geometric shapes, or even floral designs would work internally or as a border on the outside of the shade. If you can't draw well, use stencils to create a uniform finish. Got some plain lampshades hanging out in your storage room or picked some up while thrifting? This idea could work on any draw-on-able fixture.