Ikea’s Beautiful Nymö Lamp Shade

I’ve been looking for a lamp shade ever since the plastic shade on an old Target floor lamp of mine cracked. At Ikea recently, I felt absolutely giddy upon seeing these beautiful shades.

I love the geometric cutout patterns. And the gold on the inside! I fell in love. I fell hard.

The Nymö shade comes in various sizes — from 9″ for a table lamp to 23″ to hang as a pendant (as shown in the first photo at the top of this post). It comes in four colors: black, white, blue, and green.

I bought the 13″ to replace my cracked lampshade. Being Ikea, it was flat-packed, of course.

Here’s what you find upon opening the box.

I actually don’t mind at all that the shade is flat packed. In fact, I find of prefer it because if you ever move, you can take it apart — a space saver for packing! The shade comes rolled up.

Here’s that gorgeous luxe interior.

The instructions.

Of course you always get to that part of the instructions where you wonder what they’re trying to tell you.

Despite that one cryptic instruction, the lamp shade is incredibly easy to put together. Each edge of the rolled-up shade has clips. Simply clip them to the two metal circular frames. Then, velcro it shut. Though the instructions show two people working together, for this small-sized shade, I was able to do it myself.

Ta da!

And now for the big reveal.

I tried this lamp shade out for about a month. Pros: it’s gorgeous! Easy to put together! Totally reasonably priced. The 13″ size shown here is $24.99. The large 23″ pendant is $39.99. The fabric on the shade (made out of polyester) has a nice texture to it. It doesn’t look or feel cheap.

However, with a heavy heart, I returned it. You see, I needed something that would actually let a lot of light through for my office. But the Nymö shade is too shady for my needs. It simply blocked out too much light. I even tried switching to a brighter light bulb, but that didn’t help much. As a pendant hanging over a table, it might work better, but on a floor lamp tasked with providing light for a room where I read and work, it didn’t cut it.

Sigh. I’m sad this didn’t work out. My search continues.

UPDATE 12/10/17 – I’m trying to be better about making ethical shopping choices, so I’m updating my posts with info about where and how things were made. I don’t remember where this item was made, but Ikea was named an ethical company in 2010 by Ethisphere Institute, for what it’s worth.

2023 Update

4/6/23 – It’s more than five years later, and I find myself with yet another broken shade on a floor lamp. (This time, it was a glass shade. Big oops!) After shopping around, I ended up back at Ikea and  bought the 9″ Nymö lamp shade. It only comes in black, which reads more like a very dark brown to me.

In 2023, the options are fewer. Ikea no longer offers the green or blue. You can only get the white or black. There’s also only one pattern available: this one with the curves and dots, which reminds me of boobs. Prices have also gone up by a lot. Hello inflation? The 9″ shade, formerly $20, now cost $29.99. The 13″ size I tried before at $24.99 is now $37.99.

What I’m doing differently these days is I’m using a bigger, brighter LED bulb meant for flood lights, so I no longer have the problem I did before with the lamp shade being too shady.

To be honest, the luxe shiny gold interior of the shade doesn’t quite go with the silver satin finish of this floor lamp, a discontinued Ikea one. But I’m not going to worry too much about it.