April 18, 2009

For A Southwest Style Bedroom Use Rawhide Lamp Shades

by: Craig Chambers

Rawhide lamp shades are what can turn your bedroom into a designed showplace of southwest style. By accessorizing your bedroom with rawhide shades you are infusing the key elements of the decorating process. It is the natural character of rawhide that captures the essence of southwestern design and adds the rustic beauty to your room. With just a few changes to your lamps and lampshades you too will find the warm inviting feel of a southwestern bedroom.

You might be surprised to find how many different types or styles work with southwest design. For example, you might find that you already have all the lamps you need and the addition of rawhide lamp shades makes them work perfectly. By displaying them differently with rustic shades, many lamps can be transformed from traditional to rustic style. It’s not so much the lamp as it is the shade that displays the rustic texture you want. Get creative with an old lamp by adding rawhide shades and watch the room come to life.

It is best to match your rawhide lamp shades in your bedroom by color. For southwest style bedroom lighting, a light bleached rawhide shade is the color of choice. Draw your bedroom together with rawhide floor lamp shades that match the shades on your bedside lamps and any table lampshades that you might have in the room. Different heights and diameters of rawhide shades are also very attractive and add an interesting sense of drama to the room.

Lighting is a key element in the bedroom. You will want to bee able to change the mood of the room. For romantic times you may want to use subtle lighting, but you will also want bright lighting for dressing. Most bedrooms are under lighted, or poorly lighted by using one overhead light. This causes a lot of glare and doesn’t have the mood creating properties of individual lamps. By using several different lamps in your bedroom, you can create focal points in different areas of the room for different moods, and use higher and lower wattage bulbs to set the right intensity of light. Natural rawhide lamp shades create an ambiance that will coordinate the southwest theme that you want to create.

Weather you use your existing lamps or purchase new rustic lamps for your bedroom, the key to having the correct look in the bedroom is to layer the lighting. In other words, create lighting zones that give you the ability to create areas of light that are suited to a specific function. One great trick to enhance your new or newly created rustic lamps is to use a dimmer switch. Because rawhide lamp shades are a natural product, different lighting moods can be set by allowing more or less light to filter through the rawhide. Another nice idea is to use remote controls, timers and automatic switches to turn light on or off in certain areas.

Bedroom lighting is important and rawhide lamp shades will add a quality of life through a beautiful warm atmosphere that you will enjoy day after day. And along with that also comes the function that allows lighting to serve you better. Lighting affects us on many levels and natural rawhide lamp shades will help you create the harmonious and peaceful bedroom that you need.

You can use lamps with rawhide shades in many locations around your bedroom, beside the bed, on a desk, as floor lamps and indirect lighting. Remember to use separate controls for reading lamps and to place the lamps so the light is projected from behind the reader to eliminate glare and shadowing.

Rawhide lamp shades will work miracles on your rustic bedroom makeover. We have been discussing southwest style, but rawhide shades are also available in dark western hide for ranch or lodge décor and in unique colors for country décor. Each type of rawhide has its own special lighting characteristics. So weather you want to lighten your bedroom, darken it, or add rustic color, you will find inspiration in hand crafted rawhide lamp shades.