How to cover a lampshade with wallpaper

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I wanted a lamp to go in my office/library as one corner of the room is pretty dark and I like everywhere to be well lit. I also like a bargain though so when I saw this lamp for £2 I snapped it up even though it wasn’t very pretty!

The lampshade was ugly and brown and the base although to some people’s taste wasn’t to mine. The two pieces didn’t even go together so my plan was to paint the base and cover the shade. I decided to use wall paper. Below you can find links to everything I used.

Wallpaper

Double sided sticky tape

Superglue

Scissors

Yellow paint

Duck egg paint

Primer

Paintbrush

Masking tape

Filler

The first thing I did was to fill in the chip with ready mixed all purpose filler and leave it to set. 

Next I started on the lampshade. If you are covering a straight drum shade the paper will just wrap straight round but if you have a regular shade that slants inwards you will need to mark out the shape you need. Start at the bottom edge of the back of your wallpaper and roll your lampshade across marking the edge with a pencil as you go.

You will have a curved strip drawn out on the back of the wallpaper.

Now you need to cut it out but DO NOT cut along your pencil lines add 1cm to each side as this extra bit will wrap around the edges of the lampshade. 

Add the double sided tape all around the outside edge.

Peel the backing from the tape and fix the edge to the shade.

Roll it all the way round and then peel off and fix the other side. Then you need to fix the edges, peel the backing from your tape and bit by bit fold the edge over and stick it down. Although the tape stuck it down to start off with, you might have seen on my Instagram stories that it wouldn’t stay stuck! I think it was because the lampshade was a velvety material. If your lampshade is smooth the double sided tape should stick it down fine but I went back round the edges and restuck all the bits that wouldn’t stay down with a little super glue.

Here is my shade when I had finished sticking it all.

I then used yellow emulsion to paint the inside of the shade. It took 2 coats.

Moving on to the lamp base I started off by using masking tape to cover the fittings of the lamp.

The whole base then got one coat of primer, using a primer ensures that your top coat of paint fully adheres to the surface and won’t scratch off.

I then used yellow emulsion and duck egg emulsion to paint the base. Again it took 2 coats.

 I love the finished piece and it will look great sat on top of the half bookcase in my office/library. You can still see where the chip was a little as I don’t think I put enough filler in but I can either face it the other way or fill it better and repaint it later. Learning how to cover a lampshade with wallpaper means you can cheaply match all your lampshades to any room. You could even cover the outside plain and add patterned wallpaper to the inside! If you give this project a try remember to come back and let me know how it goes!

Lianne x

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