The rice-paper shade on IKEA's Regolit floor lamp isn't the most durable material. When Samuel Bernier found an otherwise-working Regolit with a torn-up shade, he decided to replace it with a 3-D printed cover of his own design.

That quickly became 12 3-D printed shades of his own design. In seven colors. But with a low material cost Bernier can afford to swap them out whenever. He used SolidWorks to shape a series of bulbous shades and print them, first on his UP! 3-D printer, then on his MakerBot Replicator 2.

He calls the project Dentelle, French for lace.

"A lot of textile lampshades look like corsets," he says. "Women used to customize them manually and took days to complete a simple piece. The industrial revolution changed the world of textiles and automatized it more than a century ago. Today's 3-D printing revolution changes the world of mass customization."

Thanks to that revolution, Bernier will be distributing the shades through several means: a limited print run of his own, digitally to factories around the world, and even to individual printer owners.

"The eradication of long-distance shipping and warehousing is a great opportunity of digital manufacturing and we have to start using this potential now," he says.

Bernier, who is the artistic director for leFabShop, a digital manufacturing startup in France, previously won runner-up in Core77's 2012 Design Awards for a series of 3-D printed alternative lids, designed to help re-use plastic bottles.

Images: Courtesy of Samuel Bernier and Veronique Huyghe