‘Ubiquitous’ would be a good word for the paper lantern. Possibly one of the cheapest ways to shroud a bare light bulb you might find hanging from your ceiling. So popular that there are websites dedicated to it – Paper Lantern Store, The Hanging Lantern Company, and the Paper Lantern Company. Every size, any colour, and on Amazon they cost about £1.50 each… 

But why am I writing about these? Well on its own, one of these is not that special, but if you carefully arrange a host of them about the ceiling… How about this one, from slowlanenotes.blogspot.com:

Then if you fancy trying this yourself, have a read of ‘DIYable design: clustered paper lanterns’ by Mr Kate, from whence this inspirational picture: 

(and whilst you’re there take a look at the article on turning top hats into lanterns – I kid you not.)

They look best bunched together with no space between them. There’s plenty of photos on Google showing paper lanterns ‘en mass’ used for wedding marquees, but they all seem to spread the lanterns thinly which looses the effect. You also have to watch the tendency for them to look like giant wasp nests, which could be quite alarming:

 

Finally there’s the option to paint or decorate your lanterns to match your decor or provide an artistic focus to the room. Remodelista.com has a great article on this, with 5 DIY ideas and some imaginatively painted lanterns, such as this:

 

as well as links to further websites on the subject.

Hopefully the first of many. I thought it would be useful to post some of my favourite lights, with a little explanation of why. The majority of lights I choose are judged principally on how well they hide the light source. The style of a light has to be chosen to suit its surroundings, even if it’s chosen to be invisible, or to do some sort of chameleon trick of hiding no matter what decoration scheme is around it. So I will try not to favour lights because I like the style! Maybe when I have a bit more time I could look at doing “Top 5” lights of a particular style, for example and currently very ‘in’ would be industrial style.

There’s also the quality of construction, though this is normally linked to price, and then there’s the simple question of ‘how much light can it give’.

So first light tomorrow…

A PS on terminology:
I could choose to call light fittings ‘luminaires’ and light bulbs ‘lamps’, which seems to be the language of the lighting community, but I hope to keep this readable… Plus I think luminaires would keep getting autocorrected to luminaries.