God, how I love custom

build your own builtby lamp

A few years ago I was at a huge retail trends meeting (That’s right, make your peace with it. I sell my soul to marketing people to pay the mortgage.) and the big buzzword was “customization.” According to this meeting, consumers want control over everything from their web experience to the colors of their messenger bags. While I’m usually pretty cynical about the stuff that comes out of such sessions, I had to admit that the suits seemed on the right track with this one. I love creating my own stuff and I’m all on board with companies that let me noodle around with their product design. (Converse got me hooked on custom Chuck Taylor’s a couple of years ago and now I can’t stop.)

Inhabit, a site that might as well be called “M’s personal retail annex,” now has this great lamp setup that lets you configure the components into a pretty freakin’ cool piece of modern cottage decor. The tool is fun and works pretty well and that alone is enough to make me kill at least an hour designing a variety of lamps for my new lighting landscape. Prices aren’t terrible either.