Most people choose a lampshade the way they choose a vase: by how it looks sitting there, switched off. That is a reasonable way to shop and an unreliable way to light a room. The material of a shade decides something more practical — whether the light goes down in a pool, outward as a glow, or through the shade in patterns.
There are really only three answers, and every shade we sell is one of them.
Opaque: the light goes where the openings are
An opaque shade — ceramic, stoneware, solid wood, cast stone — blocks light entirely through its body. Everything you get comes out of the openings, which means the shade's shape *is* the lighting design.
The Slot Table Lamp ($850) is the clearest example. It is a minimalist ceramic form with three openings, and its own description is unusually honest about the effect: soft, layered bands of light and a gentle downward glow. That is not a shade that lights a room. It lights a surface, and leaves the ceiling dark.
The Q Lamp ($295) does the same job in a smaller body — handmade ceramic, with a paddle for repositioning, inspired by historic candle trays. The Corduroy Table Lamp ($850) is sculptural ceramic with vertical ribbing, handcrafted in Milwaukee.
Wood behaves the same way. The Fin I Pendant ($1,050) is white oak plywood over stainless steel — fully opaque, so all of its light is thrown down onto whatever sits beneath it.
Choose opaque when there is a specific surface to light: a dining table, an island, a reading chair. Choose something else if you want the room itself to feel lit.
Translucent: the shade becomes the light source
A translucent shade transmits light through its whole surface. The fixture stops being a container and starts being the thing that glows.
The Lag Lamp ($540) is built from three translucent layers of unbleached organic cotton. Layered fabric is the softest light in the catalogue — no hard edge anywhere, no visible bulb, and the shade itself reads warm from across the room.
The Tokyo Table Lamp ($330) uses a single unbleached cotton shade on a recycled steel base. One layer instead of three means a little more brightness and a little less softness — a genuinely useful difference next to a bed.
Glass belongs in this family too, but it behaves differently: it transmits without diffusing much, so the bulb stays visible. The Smoke Grey Bell-Shaped Glass Pendant ($131.99) uses tinted glass to take the edge off that — the smoke grey adds depth and keeps the glow warm rather than glaring.
Stone can do this too, which surprises people. The Moon Alabaster Pendant ($195) is cut from natural alabaster — a soft, fine-grained gypsum rock, sliced thin enough that light passes straight through it. Its own description puts it well: the translucency of alabaster diffuses light softly and evenly. Because it is real stone, the veining differs from piece to piece, so the one that arrives will not be identical to the photograph. That is the point of it, not a flaw.
Choose translucent when you want ambient light and a fixture that looks good lit. Be deliberate about bulbs here: in a translucent shade you are looking almost directly at the bulb, so a frosted or milk bulb is usually kinder than a clear one.
Woven: the light comes through in pattern
A woven shade is neither opaque nor translucent — it is perforated. Light escapes through thousands of small gaps, which means the shade throws its own texture onto the walls and ceiling.
The Lombok Pendant ($239.99) is handcrafted woven rattan, airy and open. The Santorini Macramé Pendant ($319.99) is handwoven from natural cotton rope, 24" high by 18" wide. The Woven Seagrass Table Lamp ($287.95) brings the same effect down to a bedside or console, with a 26.5" drum shade on a wooden base.
The thing to understand about woven shades is that the pattern is the point, and it needs a wall to land on. In the middle of a large open room, that texture disperses and you lose most of the effect. Over a corner chair, in a stairwell, or against a nearby wall, it is the most characterful light you can buy.
Choosing, in one line each
- Dining table or island → opaque. You want the light on the table, not in people's eyes.
- Bedside or a room that should feel soft → translucent. Fabric over glass if you want no glare at all.
- A corner, a stairwell, or any spot with a wall close by → woven, for the pattern.
- A room that needs all three jobs done → that is normal. Most rooms end up with an opaque fixture over the surface that matters and something softer elsewhere.
One last practical note. Material also decides weight, and weight decides installation. Ceramic, stone and cast fixtures are heavy enough to be worth checking your ceiling box before ordering. Cotton, rattan and seagrass weigh almost nothing and will hang from anything.
Browse the full lighting collection to see the three families side by side.