Thought This Would Never Happen: Finally Solved A Long-Standing Problem!

If you’ve been reading BNOTP for a bit, you may remember when I put together a movie room in the basement of the Dollhouse. I mostly created this space for my grandsons to enjoy since I haven’t had a TV in my house for many, many years. I still don’t use this space very often—maybe watch a movie down here once every month or two, but I had a blast dreaming it into existence and decorating it with fun movie-related memorabilia.

There’s even a real live popcorn machine that the boys and their friends often ask me to fire up for some freshly popped popcorn. This thing gets used regularly and so far, it has worked beautifully! Highly recommend if you have a movie room!

There’s just one thing about this room though that has always bugged me. I love, love, love lamp-lighting, and try to have a minimum of five lamps in every room of my home, especially since I am not a fan of overhead lighting. Five (or more) always seems to work out to be the perfect number when I’m decorating a room and thinking about the lighting I’ll need. When I put this room together, I didn’t specifically go lamp shopping. Instead, I brought up a black-shaded lamp from Georgia that I hadn’t used for years and had stashed away in the basement. I almost donated it several times, but for some unexplained reason had kept it around. I am not a huge fan of black shades for most rooms since they offer very little light, mostly just emitting light upward and downward.

I never really understood the appeal of lamps with black shades for that reason—that was until I was furnishing this movie room. The last thing you want in a movie room is a lot of bright light, at least not most of the time! I love how the black-shaded lamp I placed here illuminates the table, but not much else. It’s so vision-friendly when you need to turn on a lamp for a second during a movie and don’t want to blind everyone else in the room. I still needed another lamp on the other end of the sofa, so I ended up absconding with a lamp from my office that was the right size. It doesn’t have a black shade, but I liked how it looked, so it stayed.

There are a few other whimsical light sources around the room. You may have noticed the glaring white shelf in the photo above. That shelf has this fun “Movie Night” light tucked into the shelf at one end. I like to turn it off during movies, but other family members like having it on full-time, even when watching movies.

It has always bothered me that I couldn’t have lights on the other side of the room. This room has always felt so unbalanced to me with lights on the left side of the room, but none on the right side. For a long time I haven’t been exactly sure how to fix that issue since there is a large, 83-inch TV on the right wall and the last thing it needs is glaring lamps on either side of it. When family is down here, they are almost always watching a movie or a football game, so who wants or needs lamps on either side of the TV during those times? I thought lamps nearby would really interfere with watching a show or movie. How to solve this dilemma: badly wanting lamps all around the room, but not wanting to add lamps where they would cause problems with watching the TV.

Recently, I purchased throw pillows for the outdoor seating area that I just added to the garden patio. I wasn’t sure what size pillows I would need, so I ordered four in both the 16-inch and the 20-inch size, with plans to return the ones that didn’t work. The 20-inch size turned out to be perfect, so I headed over to At Home to return the 16-inch ones in person. After completing the return, I decided to do a bit more shopping. I was all over the store that day and eventually ended up in the lamp department. I can rarely resist checking out lamps when I’m out shopping since they are one of my favorite “accessories” for the home. While shopping the lamp department, I saw a lamp that reopened that door in my brain that had temporarily closed on solving the lamp problem.

It didn’t hurt that the lamp was on sale, but it was its black, linen-like shade and shorter stature that really caught my eye.

And I actually liked how it looked! I have so much trouble finding lamps that I like these days.

I usually shy away from lamps with drum shades; I don’t care for the shape and how they don’t shield the eyes from the light when you walk by them as a tapered shade does, but these were so pretty, and the price was so good, I decided to give them a try. Would they work here on either side of the TV?

I was so surprised to see how little light they reflected onto the TV. In person, you don’t notice any interference with what’s playing on the TV. I will still probably turn them off while watching a movie since I don’t like any distractions at all when I’m really into a good movie, but I LOVE how they look and function here!

Here’s how a movie looks when the lamps are turned on. I like how they illuminate the movie posters a bit, but barely add any light to the TV screen.

I really like their dark, linen-like shades! They are currently on sale right now for just $24.99 each. So I found two lamps I really like for this side of the room for under $50! Miracles do happen! (Lamp is available here: Lamp with Linen-like Black Shade.)

Again, I will most likely turn them off when watching a movie, but I am thrilled to have found two beautiful lamps that don’t distract or interfere with what’s playing on the TV. I never thought that would happen!

I don’t quite have five lamps in this room, but if you count the lit “Movie Night” sign on the bookshelves and the lit “Cinema” sign above the popcorn machine, I sorta have six lights in the room. Oh, and there’s the lit red star on the bookshelves—we’ll count it, too. Ha!

Okay, I’m off to do a bit of perennial planting, if the heat isn’t too bad out there. Hope you are keeping cool!