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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48356
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The idea of the term "lampshade" is too reduce the glare. Not to highlight it! Instead of completely shading the lamp, conventional lampshades will rather blend off parts of its emission, and let it through where the illuminated surfaces--generally the ceiling and walls--will diffuse it and reflect a soft ambient light.

In that sense, you could let shine through, tone down and colour the direct emission (physically, the shading material absorbs light, but also reflects back away from the outside; this gives the transmission rate of the cover).

For reflection, I guess, you could foretell how far it is going to go, how far the character is willing to go, what you deem non-sense or cliched, etc.

The mechanics and tropes to achieve this can be generic and cliched themselves.

FYI: Lamp-design is an utterly ridiculous topic. Not only do they come in different forms, from chandeliers to Bauhaus style globes, but the prettiest and most expensive lamps are a hell to install, because compact as they are they hardly leave enough space for wiring and installation, I tell you. Too long wires from the outlet wont fit in. To short wires on the other hand cannot be connected, if they are just long enough to have it sit in place, but not enough to remove it just a bit for a hand to get behind. If the blends and spot reflectors are metallic, you have to wear satin gloves, lest visible finger prints taint the material (butteric acid will edge in permanent stains over time, even). Many lamps in a row should be perfectly alligned. Lamps hanging closer to windows should light stronger, to emulate daylight falling in. Color temperature depends on the emitter and can only be filtered, not changed or amplified, unless through LASER stimulation (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radition) or diffraction through optics (prism, lens, gas), that can hardly be called shading, though in fact the apperture, i.e. the blend, of a camera refines the focus, saturation or blur, especially around edges (Depth of field, Field of View, contrast and abberations); "apperture" is a doublet of "overture", by the way.

> In astronomy, the diameter of the aperture stop (called the aperture) is a critical parameter in the design of a telescope. Generally, one would want the aperture to be as large as possible, to collect the maximum amount of light from the distant objects being imaged. The size of the aperture is limited, however, in practice by considerations of cost and weight, as well as prevention of aberrations (as mentioned above). [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture])

The opposite of "foreshadowing" is "telegraphing", by the way (viz [What's an idiom for "making something too obvious"](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/513054/whats-an-idiom-for-making-something-too-obvious/513060?r=SearchResults#513060))

Original score: 0