Thread: safety of tissue paper?

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Iv'e made a cardboard cover for my cieling fan.I used a plastic wrapping paper to cover the cutout area and then added red tissue paper on top.My plan is to attach it to our ceiling fan to hide it yet still get light.I have found though that the light cover itself gets a little warm.Wondering if this will be a fire hazard? has anyone done or heard of this before? I will post pic of it when i find my camera , but it looks something along the lines of this but with a few alterations and red shining through instead of white.

If it's regular incandescent bulbs, they can get really hot, so I'd make sure it was just warm and not HOT. I've burned up a blanket when I was a kid by having an exposed bulb sitting too near... that was scary.

If you can, switch out to low wattage (25 watts) or get some 40 watt equivelent CFL bulbs (those spiral compact florescents that screw into a regular socket). They still get warm and wouldn't be good if it was in direct contact with paper, but if you're talking a shade like the above, it should be fine. They don't get as hot as a regular incandescent bulb.

That's a great idea. However, the tissue paper sounds like a house fire to me. Why not use red light bulbs? Safer and simple.

yah i'm thinking of swapping out the bulbs..it has these funny xmas looking bulbs so if mayby i leave one bulb in it may be okay.I did red bulbs last year but something about cieling fans are just not scary...so medievil bieng the theme i thought hey i'll cover it with this.I havent modge podged it on yet either so its just lightly glued.Looking for camera now so i can show what i mean...thank you

K found camera..heres afew pics of it and the actual light it will cover.Doesnt look so great yet but not done yet.Just dont want to finish if its not safe...can always be hung with battery candles instead.

Seeing the lamp fixture, I think you'd be safe as long as the bulbs and light shade weren't in direct contact with the the paper... Still would suggest switching the bulbs out (I save blown bulbs so I have something in the sockets but don't want lots of light), If you don't have the ceiling fan on, then you could just use fishing like to tie the medieval shade so it hangs down a few inches from the actual light shade, and it will not be in contact at all, allow for air circulation and should still work as a cool shade cover... nice job actually on recreating that look!

Definitely get lower wattage bulbs - even one regular incandescent puts out a lot of heat. And you want it atmospheric and creepy anyway which calls for dim lights.

If you want to be sure, hang it up there, and WATCH IT for a few hours. Get up there and check the heat output every 20 minutes, and if it is doing okay after several hours, then you probably will be okay for the party!

With the glass piece in place the paper should only get warm, but it's no guarantee. The higher the wattage of the incandescent bulb the more heat generated and the higher the fire hazard becomes. remember--incandescent bulbs powered easy bake ovens for a reason. I use a 25w incandescent to heat a tank box in the winter and it's enough to keep my lines from freezing in subzero weather. Compact florescent bulbs generate very little heat and might be safer and you could look into LED options.

Tissue paper is HIGHLY flammable and should not be near light bulbs. The CFLs may be safe since they produce less heat. What if you put the paper between 2 layers of clear contact paper? Still leave space for air circulation and don't let the glass fixture touch it. Clear contact can also be painted with faux leaded glass paint, eliminating the paper layer. You could even use more than one color paint, alternating between red and yellow, and keep the uncolored CFLs. You are doing a great job. Love your design and the idea.

Here is another thought you could take out the light bulbs and put a screw in plug in one of the sockets. Then plug in a string of xmas lights up in the glass globe or wind them around the fan blades if you can keep them from contacting the paper--I believe they would generate a lot less heat. You could also use some of those little led clip on spotlights or even a flashlight of some sort--clip then onto the fan blades or chains and use that as the light source for your medieval reproduction. I would for sure do a test run to make sure that paper does not become hot whatever lighting method you use.

I think your plan to disguise the ceiling fan is great by the way, nice work.

all great ideas and suggestions.I will try it out this week and see what happems.Worst case senario if its to hot i can use my flickering candles i got from the dollar store...100% safe when theres no heat only batteries lol , and it may give a better look as if candles are in it. I still need to make the leaf and rosettes for it but just wanted to run rhis flammable thing by everyone. Thanks again all