New Twist on Designer Favorite Chandelier | IKEA Hack

The Sinnerlig woven bamboo chandelier is a favorite among designers for its great style, versatility, and amazing price point at $70. If you haven't noticed it before, fair warning that you'll start to see it all over your feeds and 'Pins. To this point, have a look at what Apartment Therapy has to say here or Hunker here.

Sharing my experience using these chandeliers in one of my favorite activations, an outside beer garden and dynamic public space in Boston - The Patios presented by Berkshire Bank. Man, looking at these photos has me longing for beers with friends and building cool things with cool people.

Cut to a late night of final installation as we were prepping for the following day's ribbon cutting with the Mayor. Alongside my spirit animal Bianca Mauro of BRM Production Management and our bud Ed Slapik of GBM6, we were retrofitting these lights for outside usage. They looked great, but were a bit bright (light bamboo that just wasn't vibing with the barn wood). I grabbed some stain, a rag, and after an hour of wrestling these forms, a toned-down weathered looked appeared. We opted for two single installations and combined three chandeliers for a marquee entry couch space.

We had these installed seasonally and they held up quite well in an outdoor location, provided you have an electrician to regrade the wiring. Best part about these lights is the evening light scape and movement from the breeze. Swoon-worthy.

Photo credit: 1/2/4 - Nicolaus Czarnecki, 3 - Bianca Mauro

So, now it's time to take these outdoor learnings into a small cabin. While we had the scaffolding in place for painting, our resident electrician Pete tackled replacing the ceiling fan and the hanging chandeliers over the dining and stairwell landing. I did a little more prep than on the fly at City Hall Plaza and assembled the materials for the job:

I like using a sponge for getting the first coat of stain on surfaces and did a blend of my go-to's Golden Oak and Special Walnut from Minwax. Learning that old rags have a tendency to get caught in the bamboo, I used a mircofiber cloth to blend in and soak up the excess stain.

We opted for the big impact of the trio of chandeliers again over the dining area. We scoped out placement and originally thought we would keep the three independent wires from the rafter but it just looked too stringy. With a little bit of design improv I braided the strands and voila! We secured the end with a simple small black tie wrap and here you have it.

Progress & Before:

Over the stairs we went with the smaller Knixhult IKEA chandelier ($40) and treated the same way.

Progress & Before:

Happy hacking if you decide to take on this simple upgrade to the IKEA chandelier staple. Stain or no stain, you can't go wrong adding this chandelier to an outside patio this Spring.