Light for bedside table series#

In my job as a principal at Atelier Cho Thompson, a bicoastal design firm working across architecture, interiors, and graphics, I’ve worked on projects from homes to restaurants to studios to hotels.

Light for bedside table series#

In the new series “Curbed Catalogue,” we will highlight especially excellent, well-designed products across a variety of price points - from a rose-colored lamp unearthed at Target to raw-silk pillows made by a pair of architects.

She says the pleats can collect dust, but are easy enough to clean - you can use a microfiber cloth, but Daly prefers a can of compressed air.Photo-Illustration: Curbed Photos: Retailers “The shade shapes the light pretty well so that you can keep reading without disturbing someone trying to sleep next to you.” (Another reader-friendly quality: Dent uses the lamp’s open square base to contain books and other bedside ephemera.) Strategist deals editor Sam Daly has owned hers since 2020, and “I cherish it,” she says.

Evan Dent, the manager of 192 Books in Chelsea, received it as a gift from his girlfriend: “I often like to read a little later into the night than my girlfriend wants to stay up, so she got me this lamp,” he says. The lamp can live on your desk, but its low, diffused light works well on a bedside table, particularly for nighttime readers. Liza Curtiss and Corey Kingston, the co-founders of architecture-and-design studio Le Whit Strategist contributor Chris Black and social-media strategist Utibe Mbagwu, who named it the best thing she bought in 2020. It’s a favorite of SNL’s Chloe Fineman, who has one Matin lamp in New York and one in L.A. “This little light balances timeless design elements like chrome detailing and a pleated shade with the distinctive quirks Hay is known for, such as rich, punchy colors and a playful sense of proportion,” writes designer and architect Ming Thompson. If you’re looking for other types of lamps, visit our Lighting District for a roundup of our 100 favorite lighting implements.īrightness: 220 lumens | Dimmable: Click button with three preset levelsįar and away, the most frequently mentioned and highest-rated fixture among the experts we spoke to is Hay’s Matin table lamp, a light with a square wire base and a pleated cotton shade that comes in two sizes and seven colors. The only aesthetic criteria for last light on is that you like it, and we’ve found lamps for everyone, including German resin mushroom for cottagecore homes, a concrete-based globe, and a subtly UFO-shaped lamp with a handmade ceramic shade.

(This is also a good reason to keep your phone in another room, or at least out of arm’s reach.) Since they’re sharing night-table real estate with water glasses, books, alarm clocks, and other little objects, they should be on the compact side, sturdy and hard to knock over.įor nighttime readers, directional light is useful: “If you’re gonna be reading in bed, I think it’s really important to have lighting that’s adjustable,” says interior designer Liz Lipkin, and “if you’re sharing a bed with someone and you want to read, that person will be less disturbed by something with a directional shade.” Even if you don’t read in bed, a bedside lamp should fulfill the amorphous aesthetic quality of being a good “last light on” - the final light you turn off before going to sleep, a starring role in your nightly ritual that requires a design you find soothing and beautiful. Bedside lights should either be dim or dimmable, conducive to winding down at the end of the day and signaling to your brain via lower, warmer light that it’s time to go to sleep. Still, after consulting 15 experts, I was able to distill some essential qualities. Bedside lights have a nebulous place in lamp taxonomy: Many good bedside lights could double as table lamps, desk lamps, or night lights bedside lighting can also include wall-mounted sconces and even floor lamps.