hackism: the infinite diy possibilities of ikea's LÖBBO shade

We thought we were so smart when we thought to blog about the hacks we’d imagined for Ikea’s Löbbo shade, which is basically a sheet of polypropylene that you form into a drum and secure with metal struts; it can be placed on a lamp base or hung from a pendant. It comes in various sizes, but we bought several of the biggest with the idea of using the sheets of polypropylene — which is pretty heat-proof —as a RAW MATERIAL with which to fashion all sorts of shades, using our trusty exacto knife. (We’ve been searching for readily-available shade materials for years.)

First thing we planne was to tailor the Löbbo shade we’ve got on a standing lamp: slice off a 2 or 3 inches from the drum-like shade to give it a more sleek, retro look. Then we’d go to town playing with the remaining sheets of Löbbo polypropylene we have, to fashion some sort of scultpural pendant light, like this one we found at Ouno:

It spurred our thinking as to the endless possibilitiies for Löbbo’s parts (which only cost a few bucks).

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But before we even tried any ideas out, we googled Löbbo shade and discovered that legions of imaginative people were already way ahead of us. At Makably, a woman named Zipper 8 Lightening has created a trove of Löbbo hacks that you can buy, including one made by inserting colored drinking straws into the shade:

…and a handsome one festooned with pop top tabs

We found many more embellishments to Ikea’s basic drum shade. But our favorite Löbbo iteration harkens back to our original idea of use the Löbbo shade MATERIAL to fabricate unique lighting, in league with Ikea’s Hemma pendant cord set. We found it on Ikea Hacker. Vendela bought extra shades and cut one into strips to insert into slits cut into the regularly-assembled Löbbo.