Love IKEA TÄRNABY? Here are 4 ways to make it better

The IKEA TÄRNABY lamp is inspired by traditional kerosene lamps, with a visible light bulb that emulates a live flame. Lovely in many ways.

TÄRNABY table lamp | Buy on IKEA.com

But users have made small improvements to table lamp and made it even better.

#1 IKEA TÄRNABY frosted

The reason I did this was because I like the lamp, but even with the bulb that was included it can get bright enough to hurt my eyes unless I kept it on a low light level. I wanted to be able to use it on maximum brightness so I decided that I should diffuse the light somehow.

5 minutes later I had the glass taken off. And with the spray can in my hand and after an hour of drying — since this stuff dries incredibly fast — it was back on the lamp and I could turn it up as much as I wanted.

I also personally like the way it looks this way more, but the detail in the edison bulb gets lost in the light diffusion on higher brightness levels.

IKEA item used:

TÄRNABY table lamp and included LED bulb

Other materials:

Krylon glass frosting spray
Masking tape

Here’s how:

It’s simple really.

First, I took off the glass bulb cover.

Next, I used masking tape to block off the inside of the lamp so none of the spray would get inside.

Then I applied 2 coats of the glass frosting spray to the outside of the glass and let it dry.

~ by Noah Frix

#2 Add a diffuser

Snomifox took an easier route to soften the glare from the TÄRNABY lamp. He used a piece of tape like non-woven fabric as a diffuser for the bulb. Just cut to size and slide it into the glass jar.

#3 Make it old school

Enhance the vintage style of the TÄRNABY lamp with a reflector, like the oil lamps of yore. Gismo75 made a reflector holder for the TÄRNABY lamp and it’s available on Thingiverse.

#4 Give it a personalised shade

I have bought a TÄRNABY desktop lamp. Since I do 3D printing, I immediately started thinking about how to modify it.

I have designed a 4 armed bracket that fits in the slot of the glass cover and from this point on, it can hold a lithophane cover.

After the sample printing, it turned out, it has problems so I had to redesign it to a 7-arm bracket. This print succeeded, so with the help of the lithophanemaker I generated a barrel type 12 cm size lithophane cover.

Using a layer cutter, I matched the two objects and generated a g-code for the printing. As for the printing, I used a highly pigmented ABS filament, with 0,1 layer size. The printing lasted almost 40 hours long.

Final results — personalised lithophane lamp shades. I think it is cool.