Nothing is more conducive to happiness than clicking off the main light and settling down in the soft glow of a bedside lamp – but don’t waste the opportunity to introduce some serious style into your bedroom décor. Here’s a guide to choosing the perfect bedside lamp...
If you’re ever in doubt as to the vital practical importance of a good bedside lamp, think about how your heart sinks when you’re sleeping in an unfamiliar room and realise it doesn’t have one. What could be worse than plunging straight from bright light to pitch dark with nothing in between? Only one thing: having to go in the other direction in the morning, from dark to ghastly, painful full-beam. So obviously you need some sort of glowy thing next to the bed as a bare minimum. But why settle for less than a beautiful, unique designer bedside lamp? It’s a perfect opportunity to enhance or complement your bedroom’s style and décor. Here’s some inspiration...1) Choose a lamp that matches your bedroom style
Image: Brooke Copp-Barton
What works all depends on the lamp’s surroundings – the scale of the bedroom, the height of your bedside table, and of course, the colours and materials you love. Look at the perfectly-placed Nellie in emerald green above, in a bedroom styled by the brilliant Brooke Copp-Barton. And how about this bedroom gorgeous bedroom by the designer Laura Stephens? Our Artur table lamp in stone glaze complements perfectly the decor and the organic patterns of the wallpaper.
Image: Laura Stephens
2) Choose something that’s just beautiful in itself
Lottie bedside lamp
Of course, if the bedroom is one room where you don’t worry too much about getting everything to match and just want a beautiful object that will look splendid in isolation, then you can always just treat yourself to a bedside lamp that will cheer you up whenever you switch it on. Above is the Lottie bedside lamp – such a lovely piece of pottery it doesn’t actually need the lightbulb to justify its existence, but it has one anyway.
3) Sneak in something unusual
Aurora in orange
Another way of looking at the bedside lamp is that it’s a chance to go for something really unusual. In the privacy of your bedroom you can all sorts of unusual and quirky things that you might not dare to display downstairs. How about one of our famous resin lamps, perhaps in a really bold colour, like the Aurora in orange?
4) Pair up…
Image: Guy Mallinson Use a pair of matching table lamps on either side of a double bed - like these two Wisterias in Guy Mallinson's luxury treehouse. Or you can deliberately mismatch two different lamps but use identical shades, or give two identical lamps different shades - whatever floats your boat.
5) Use a desk light by the bed
7) Try wall lights by the bed
A different approach altogether to bedside lighting is to use strategically-positioned wall lights, opening up a world of lampshade possibilities. And there's nothing to stop you combining wall lights and table lamps by the bed: scroll back up to the second picture from the top and see if you can spot where Brooke Copp-Barton has strategically placed a Limber LED reading light behind above the Nellie bedside lamp. Genius!
See the full Pooky range of LED wall bedside reading lights here.
Browse Pooky's beautiful, affordable bedside lamps here.
