Retro Pendant Light Fixtures & Drum Lamp Shades

Custom MidCentury Modern Lighting & Design

fiberglass lampshade - retro modern design

Meteor Lights designs and fabricates fiberglass drum lampshades, mid-century modern light fixtures, and retro pendant lamps, bringing classic ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s American lighting design to your home or business. Our hand-stained drum and tiered lampshades also look great with streamline moderne, tiki, vintage western, googie/biomorphic, and Danish Modern styles, as well as with midcentury/modern-influenced contemporary lighting design.

Our colorful lamps, fiberglass lampshades, and pendant light fixtures accommodate a wide range of styles for most residential and commercial lighting applications, whether it’s 1940s and 1950s Eames-era Americana, or contemporary and modern styles influenced by classic post-war industrial design. You will find Meteor Lights’ pendant light fixtures, lamps, and drum lampshades in five-star restaurants and dive bars, coffee houses and rock clubs, new architectural showcase homes and renovated rockabilly pads, hair salons and bowling alleys, and retail establishments of all kinds. Vintage dealers and retro shops around the country specify perfect replacement tiered and drum shades for their ‘forties, ‘fifties, and ‘sixties era vintage lamps. We offer a wide selection of retro-modern and contemporary shade styles, colors, and designs – providing a nearly infinite range of lighting possibilities.

Our shade material is the same fiberglass parchment used on the vintage drum lampshades in the ‘forties and ‘fifties. This fabric is highly translucent (not transparent), and provides a soft, rich glow unlike any other lighting diffusion material. Linen, paper, cloth, and silk aren’t light diffusion materials: they’re intended for clothing, print, and upholstery . They might look nice on your lamp when it’s turned off; our shades look great when your lamp is off, too, but when your lamp is lit, our shades glow like no other material made. Plus, our fiberglass parchment is durable and water-resistant (unlike linen, paper, cloth, or silk), and is easily cleaned with a damp cloth. We hand-stain our drum and barrel shades to achieve a wide range of vintage, retro, modern, and contemporary colors, and we can match your colors (via fabric swatch, paint chip, or Pantone Guide), as well. We take pride in fabricating the coolest, highest-quality, and widest variety of replacement drum shades anywhere.

We specialize in the low-profile shallow drum lampshades and tiered shades characteristic of mid-century/modern lighting of the 1940s and 1950s. Within certain parameters, the height of our drum shades can be customized to fit most lamps; for example, we also make the large barrel lampshade style characteristic of many lamps from the 1960s.

We also fabricate custom drum lampshades, such as the Majestic Z-Lamp tambourine shade with the classic zig-zag design, and the Danish Modern floor lamp inverted tall cone shade.
retro fiberglass lamp shade

In addition to our replacement fiberglass lampshades, we incorporate our shade material into our custom-made swag lamps (hanging lamps), custom pendant light fixtures, sconce shields (perfect for your vintage Airstream Trailer), and our own line of mod acrylic lamp bases. Our UL Listed modern pendant lamps are suitable for many indoor commercial and residential applications. We can provide energy-efficient CFL pendant lamp sets (self-ballasted G24Q-3) to meet California Title 24 electrical requirements, for your “green modern” residential and commercial interior lighting projects. Most of our pendant swag lamps and hard-wired light fixtures 10″ diameter and up can be fitted with bottom diffusers. We can help design your retro-themed lighting project, or we can fabricate custom shades and light fixtures to your specs.

Can’t wait 6-10 weeks for your custom order? You might find your lighting solution in our in-stock lampshade gallery. These items are available for purchase and shipment within 48 hours.

Located in the Mission District of San Francisco since 1996, Meteor Lights provides cool custom lamps, vintage-retro and contemporary lampshades, and modern light fixtures to the Bay Area, Northern California, the West, and beyond.

More information on our lamps, light fixtures, and lampshades can be found on our
FAQ page.

….Advice for choosing lampshades and pendant light fixtures can be found on our Lighting Tips page, where you can read our tips on selecting the right size and style shade and pendant lamp or light fixture, as well as some suggestions on choosing colors and patterns.

……Many pictures of our mid-century lampshades and light fixtures can be found in our Gallery. The photo gallery has sub-galleries showing many different examples of how our shade style, size, color, pattern, and lanyard options can be configured. There, you can see examples of our pendant light fixtures in situ in restaurants, bars, and other hospitality and commercial lighting settings, as well as customer photos of our shades and pendant lamps in action. There you will also find tables for most of our color, pattern, and lanyard options.

……..And we’ll be glad to answer any of your lighting-related questions at store@meteorlights.com

 

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