How to Create a Bamboo Lampshade

Bamboo is a great way to add life into any old lampshade and lamp. Not only is it great for a lamp, it’s great for anything in your home that has gone out of style. Picture frames, candle holders, flowerpots, clocks, or anything your heart desires! It’s easy to create bamboo-covered projects with these simple to use steps and advice for working with bamboo. Don’t throw it away, bamboo it!

In this article I’ll tell you how I redid an old lamp I had sitting around my house. While I’ll be explaining how to bamboo over the lamp, the basic ideas are the same for placing bamboo over any object.

The lampshade that I used on my lamp had a cloth cover over a plastic cover that attached to a metal frame. First, remove the lampshade from the lamp to make it easier to work with. Then I started by first removing the cloth covering carefully from the plastic covering. I used a razor blade to score the edge of the cloth that ran into the seam on the plastic. Once I did that, the cloth separated easily from the plastic lampshade. Discard the cloth. Now I had an opaque cream-colored plastic lampshade to work with.

The bamboo I used was a mix of 1-inch to 3-inch thick pieces about 2-feet long. I purchased these from a local craft supply store, however I assume that you could collect your own bamboo in the outdoors. Just make sure the bamboo is cured well and not green. Green bamboo will rot eventually and it may mold. Set the green bamboo out in the sun to cure. When it’s brown, coat it with a few layers of urethane. Cut the bamboo a little longer than the length of your lampshade. Use a miter saw or handsaw to cut the bamboo. It’s easier if you bundle them up together and cut them all at once, just make sure they are evenly bundled or you’ll have different lengths of bamboo.

Glue the sticks of bamboo to the lampshade using a caulk gun and clear silicone caulk. Don’t use any other type of glues, such as hot glue guns or Elmer’s! This will just melt being on a warm lampshade all the time. Other glues don’t bond that well to bamboo as silicone does. Silicone dries clear and bonds well to all surfaces. Apply the silicone caulk liberally in wavy patterns around the lamp horizontally spaced about 1-inch apart.

Attach the first bamboo stick in place onto the lampshade. Make sure it is as straight up and down the lampshade as possible. Attach the next piece tightly against the last piece and continue along the lampshade until you make it all the way around. Alternate varying thicknesses of the bamboo as you work your way around the lampshade. You can use blue painter’s masking tape to hold the bamboo in place as the silicone caulk dries. Simply rip off a strip of tape, attach it to the inside of the lamp, and wrap it over to the piece of bamboo. Once the whole lampshade is wrapped with bamboo, wrap a strip of blue painter’s masking tape horizontally around the entire lampshade until the silicone caulk has dried.

Remove the tape when the silicone caulk has dried and reattach the lampshade. You can easily decorate the entire lamp with bamboo in the same manner as I described above. Let your imagination run wild and you can cover anything with bamboo!