Living Room Table Lamps

Height against the table it stands on

The working rule is that the bottom of the shade should sit near eye level when you are seated beside it, which on a standard side table means a lamp of roughly 40cm to 50cm overall. Too tall and you look straight at the lamp; too short and it lights the table rather than the room.

A console table behind a sofa is the other position worth planning for. A lamp there lights the wall and the back of the room rather than the seating, which is what stops a living room reading as a lit island in a dark space. It also keeps the cable behind the furniture, which solves the usual problem of where the flex goes.

Pairs, and when they are worth it

Two matching lamps at either end of a sofa give even light and read as deliberate. One lamp on its own works beside a chair but leaves the other end of the room dark. Where you buy a pair, buy them together: finishes drift between production runs and two antique brass lamps bought a year apart rarely match.

Shade width and the table underneath

Shades here run 10cm to 47cm across. The shade should not overhang the table it stands on, and a lamp whose shade is wider than its table looks unstable even when it is not. On a narrow console, the taller narrow lamps in this collection are the ones that fit.

The proportion inside the lamp matters as well. As a rough guide the shade should be about two thirds the height of the base and wide enough to hide the lamp holder from a seated eyeline. A shade that is too small leaves the fitting visible and a shade that is too large makes the base look like an afterthought.

Lamp caps and dimming

Most of these take E27, with E14 and G9 behind. If you want the lamp to dim, the dimming is done by the lamp and the switch, not the fitting: fit a dimmable LED and use either a plug-in inline dimmer on the cable or a dimmer on the socket circuit. A non-dimmable LED on a dimmer will flicker or buzz.

Finish and the metal already in the room

Antique brass, polished chrome and satin nickel lead here. A table lamp sits at eye level and is one of the few fittings people look directly at, so matching it to the nearest metal in the room, a door handle or a picture frame, does more for a scheme than matching it to the ceiling light.

Two or three table lamps at 400 to 600 lumens each will light a living room for an evening without the ceiling light, which is usually the point of buying them. Spread them around the room rather than grouping them, and put at least one on the far side from the seating so the room has depth after dark.

Sockets and cable runs

A table lamp is only as convenient as the socket behind it. Before settling on a position, check the run: a cable stretched taut across a walkway is the commonest reason a lamp ends up somewhere it was not meant to be, and it is a trip hazard.