Turn An IKEA Table Lamp Into A Funky DIY That's One Of A Kind

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If you like any of the following, you'll love this DIY statement lamp — Memphis Design whackiness, MCM globe lamps, or that color of pink that goes with everything in spite of actually matching nothing. Others will like it, too. This is the work of artist and TikTok DIY influencer a2eitona, who created a really cool table lamp using IKEA's FADO globe lamp, and a bit of plastic plumbing pipe. If that sounds uninspiring, remember that the 14-second video recap of this project was liked by almost 90,000 TikTok users.

It is, fundamentally, a white lamp globe installed in the top of a large, pink spiral that closely resembles one of designer Gustaf Westman's IKEA collaborations, the IKEA VINTERFINT vase in pink ($39.99, but no longer available), but thinner. In fact, Westman is known for that shade of pink, and from a distance, the vase looks like a squiggle of lip liner that has somehow captured the soul of either an Atollo Opal lamp or a backstage vanity light. It's whimsical but interesting, reminding us that lightheartedness should delight.

It's also very easy. The video is somewhat frenetic, but it's not hard to discern most of what's going on. a2eitona starts by bending a two-meter length of ¾-inch pipe around a cooking pot with a roughly 9-inch diameter, forming a corkscrew-shaped coil with about two full wraps of the pipe. She paints the pipe with Montana Gold spray paint in Frozen Strawberry, available at Home Depot ($9.96), then nests the 10-inch FADO globe lamp ($29.99), one of those IKEA items you will probably obsess over if you're just discovering it, in the top of the coiled pipe.

The project itself is simple, but shopping for it might not be. The pipe used here is called multilayer pipe (also known as MLP, MLCP, and perhaps most commonly as pex-al-pex). It's not widely used for general plumbing in the U.S. like it is in Europe, though it is commonly used for compressed air and radiant heater tubing. You can order MLP online, but unfortunately it seems to only be available in lengths of 100 feet or more, not in the 2-meter sticks used by a2eitona. If you find it, MLP can be bent by hand or with a pipe bender of the sort you'd use for electrical conduit. It is possible to collapse the pipe just as you can collapse copper tubing with a bend that's too sharp, but this is unlikely to be a problem unless your coil has a radius much smaller than the one in this DIY project.

You might be inclined to close the ends of the pipe, which a2eitona leaves open. While you can sometimes get away with using test caps with PVC pipes and even uncrimped plugs with PEX, the removable (that is, demountable) fittings for multilayer pipe are bulbous, expensive press-fit affairs that aren't exactly in keeping with the vibe of this lamp. You might experiment with plugs from other types of pipe, but the lamp looks fine with the ends open, especially after a coat of paint (which is a necessary step in most cases because the exterior layer of MLP is usually made of PEX, which degrades when exposed to ultraviolet light).

Since MLP is hard to come by in the U.S. and the obvious alternative is PVC, and since there are some dangers of heating PVC pipe, you might choose to look elsewhere for your inspiration. Before giving up on a2eitona's coil, though, it might be worthwhile to spend a few minutes brainstorming other ways to get there, like forming the coil from PEX and stiffening it with thick un-stranded wire, spray foam, or even quick-curing cement.

IKEA often has fixtures in stock that call to mind the more playful eddies of midcentury modern design, and with the right treatment a FADO lamp looks like nothing so much as the business end of an MCM or space-age globe lamp. These lamps were plentiful and varied, and there are a lot of ways to use a FADO lamp to capture the same vibe. Anything that looks and is sized like a semi-meridian globe mount will work, and the same shape can also be used to make lights that appear to float — a common device in space-age lamps. Use an old table lamp base or candlestick for a sort of pedestal, or upend an interesting and geometrical bowl above the globe for a pendant lamp. Any chrome stand the FADO will fit in will probably work. And try resting the lamp on three sticks arranged teepee-style as a tripod — or perhaps just use a base from one of the countless tripod lamps from the modern farmhouse era. And remember that you can easily make your globe a different color with a colored or smart lightbulb.