"like a shade" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it to compare one thing to something else that is similar in some way. For example, "His expression was like a shade, still and unreadable."
To my untutored eyes, it looks simply like a shade of purple, rather like a couple of sweaters I bought that year…But honeysuckle, unlike the world's economic blues, could last only 12 months.
Wandering through millennia-old pillars I feel like a shade entering Hades.
Gradually, like a shade being drawn over a window, his right eye stopped letting light in.
The crab-roe color was superb, like a shade of Martha Stewart house paint, but the drink never rose above the two ingredients lifting it into the air.
Do you have sudden brief episodes of blindness (like a shade being pulled over your eyes) or sudden episodes of weakness in an arm or leg, or difficulty speaking?
Greta feels like a shade amid the palms, haunting two places at once — the idealized Chicago of the past, the husbands and wives dancing, intact; and the dystopic Florida of Ellen's present, the "tropical trees leaking oxygen like bad tires, houses rising out of the green abundance like pastel mushrooms".
Before redistricting, Coffman was like a shade-loving potted plant, happy in his place under a Cottonwood tree.
Some patients have described the visual disturbance as being like having a shade covering their eye.
The island of Waiheke is a bit like Nantucket and a bit like Sonoma, with a shade of the Rioja.
Steep the mixture to a shade you like, then cool and strain before using.
To production offices painted in a shade she likes?
