Nhà Chín Phòng homestay · Lâm Viên - Đà Lạt ward, Lâm Đồng province · 2026
Nhà Chín Phòng: bedside light for a cold, damp town
Nine Đông Chí bedside pendants with 4 W bulbs, a Xuân Phân set in the lobby, sealed rattan, crated and installed in two days. VND 35,600,000 before VAT.
- Owner
- Phan Quốc Toàn and Lê Hồng Nhung
- Room
- Nine-room homestay on a hillside, pine-panelled rooms, shared lobby with a dining table for six
- First light mock-up
- 48 hours after the photos
- Revisions
- 1: 6 W bulbs changed to 4 W
- Making and test lighting
- 3 weeks
- Installation
- 2 days on site
Nhà Chín Phòng is a nine-room homestay on a hillside in Lâm Viên - Đà Lạt ward, Lâm Đồng province. Phan Quốc Toàn and Lê Hồng Nhung own it and run it themselves. The bedrooms are panelled in pine. Downstairs there is a shared lobby with a dining table for six, where guests have breakfast.
The rooms before
Each room had a flush ceiling light in the middle and a small table lamp on a shelf. A guest reading in bed had to get up to switch off the ceiling light, then read with the table lamp shining in their face. Toàn wanted a bedside light you could read by that would not glare into your eyes once you lay down.
The problem in numbers
Đà Lạt is damp. Average relative humidity is about 85% across the year and the rainy season runs from late April to October, according to the climate table in the Vietnamese Wikipedia article on Đà Lạt (which cites the Địa chí Đà Lạt; checked 4 October 2026). The rooms have timber walls, windows facing the valley, and heating that is rarely switched on.
For us that number rules out giấy dó (dó paper, made from the bark of the dó tree) straight away. It gives soft, even light, but it does not belong in a damp room. That leaves rattan and seagrass. The shades need a matte moisture coat and must hang well away from the bathrooms.
The second problem is distance. The homestay is in Đà Lạt, the workshop in Ho Chi Minh City. Nine rooms, one lobby, thirteen bulbs: everything had to arrive intact and go up in as few days as possible, so no room stayed empty for long.
The mock-up, and one change
Nhung sent a photo of one bedroom and one of the lobby, both taken at night, with the ceiling heights. Within 48 hours Đặng Thu Hà sent back the mock-up: a Đông Chí (Winter Solstice) pendant beside each bed, and a Xuân Phân (Spring Equinox) set of four staggered pendants over the lobby table.
Đông Chí is a rattan bell 48 cm tall, woven closed except for one open band in the middle. Light leaves through that band as a horizontal ring at the eye level of someone sitting up against the headboard, enough to read a page. Lie down and look up, and you see closed weave, not the bulb.
The only change: in the picture, Nhung found the band of light from a 6 W bulb a little harsh against the pine. We switched to a 4 W LED, still 2700K (the yellow-white of an old incandescent) and still an E27 screw socket. The price did not change.
Making and installing
Lâm Văn Lộc bent thirteen brass frames. Huỳnh Thị Mến wove the nine bells on a single wooden mould so every room has the same size, then sealed them, along with the two rattan shades of the Xuân Phân set. Tô Minh Khang wired every lamp and left each one lit for 24 hours.
Because the lamps were leaving the city, they went in a wooden crate, each shade packed separately, with an illustrated installation guide. Khang followed the crate up to Đà Lạt and installed over two days: four rooms and the lobby on the first, the other five rooms on the second. Toàn arranged bookings so that each room was empty for only half a day. At each bed Khang set the cable length on the spot, so the ring of light sits at reading height, and photographed the number under the canopy for our ledger.
What it is like now
Thirteen bulbs: nine 4 W at the bedsides and four 6 W in the lobby, 60 W in all. Each lamp came with a spare, and any electrical shop in Đà Lạt sells the replacement. The rattan gets a wipe with a dry cloth once a month. No lamp hangs in a bathroom.
Toàn puts it simply: “Guests keep asking where to buy the bedside lamps. I give them the workshop’s number.”
What it cost, and why
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| 9 Đông Chí pendants (9 × VND 2,400,000) | VND 21,600,000 |
| Xuân Phân set for the lobby | VND 9,800,000 |
| Wooden crate and freight | VND 1,200,000 |
| Travel and two days of installation | VND 3,000,000 |
| Total before VAT | VND 35,600,000 |
With 8% VAT that comes to VND 38,448,000, half as a deposit on the approved drawing, half after installation. Delivery and fitting are free only inside Ho Chi Minh City; for other provinces the crate and the trip are quoted up front, written on the drawing, and do not change. The 4 W bulbs cost nothing extra. Frame and shade carry the same 24-month warranty as every lamp we make.
Read Khang’s piece on lighting a homestay in Đà Lạt, Mến’s on rattan in humid weather, and our page on shipping and installation.
