small retro vintage lamp shade

Retro lamp shade, 1950s vintage reproduction.
10″ diameter
main tier color: antique white
top tier color: pale aqua
pattern: webs

Choosing different colors for two different tiers poses an interesting problem. If you are contrasting a neutral color with a stronger color, which one goes where? There are different ways to approach this.

If one of the shade shade colors matches (or approximately matches) the lamp base (or part of the lamp base), do you want the matching color adjacent to the base? Or do you want to try an interesting effect, and maybe offset the matching colors, by putting the matching color on the top tier? On the other hand, do you want the stronger shade color to dominate the shade, or do you want the neutral color to prevail? In either case, you would want the preferred color on the main tier, and your secondary color on the smaller tier.

Which brings up the issue of which shade tier to put the pattern on. But that’s a topic for another day…