Most furniture fades into a room. A great lamp changes it. The right light can make a rented apartment feel designed, and a handful of lamps have done that job so well, for so long, that they have become icons in their own right. Several of them are older than most of the people who buy them, and they are still made by the companies that first put them into production.
These six are the design lamps worth buying, from a Danish pendant that solved glare in 1958 to the paper lanterns that taught the world to love soft light. Each one is still in production, and each one is copied endlessly, so we have noted how to make sure you get the real thing.
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Louis Poulsen PH 5: the pendant that tamed glare
Poul Henningsen spent his career trying to make electric light kinder to people. In 1926 he launched his three-shade system with Louis Poulsen, layering shades so that you never looked straight at the bulb. When light bulbs were later standardized, a change he disliked, he answered with a new design: the PH 5, introduced in 1958, which uses a system of shades to control the light and send it mostly downward without glare. According to Louis Poulsen, it remains the bestselling design in the company's portfolio more than six decades later. It comes in classic white and a range of graduated colors, and the smaller PH 5 Mini, the first resize of the design, arrived in 2017. Hang it low over a dining table, where it was meant to be.
Isamu Noguchi Akari: the paper lantern done right
The paper lamp in half of all design-minded bedrooms traces back to one man. Isamu Noguchi, the Japanese American sculptor, visited Gifu in Japan in 1951, a city known for its paper lanterns, and began sketching what he called light sculptures. He named them Akari, a Japanese word for light that also suggests lightness. The Akari Light Sculptures are still handmade in Gifu by the family-run Ozeki workshop, using mulberry-bark washi paper stretched over bamboo ribs, and they fold flat for shipping. Vitra distributes them in many markets. Cheap "Noguchi style" paper lamps are everywhere, but a genuine Akari has a lightness and a hand-made irregularity that copies miss, and it is still an affordable way to own a piece of design history.
Anglepoise Type 75: the British task lamp
The Anglepoise began with a spring. In 1932 George Carwardine, a British automotive engineer, developed a new kind of spring that could balance a pivoting arm so it would stay exactly where you put it. Springmakers Herbert Terry & Sons built the first lamp, and in 1935 they released the three-spring Original 1227, the archetypal Anglepoise. The family company still makes it. For a more contemporary take, the Anglepoise Type 75 desk lamp was designed in 2004 by Sir Kenneth Grange, the British industrial designer who became Anglepoise's design director in 2003. It keeps the balanced arm and adds a cleaner, more modern shade and a heavy cast iron base. It is the lamp for anyone who actually works at their desk.
Artemide Tolomeo: the Italian workhorse
If the Anglepoise is the British desk lamp, the Tolomeo is the Italian one. Designed by Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina and launched by Artemide in 1987, it uses a spring-balanced aluminum arm with visible tension cables, a mechanism that looks like engineering rather than decoration. It won Italy's top design prize, the Compasso d'Oro, and it now comes in a whole family of sizes, from clamp lamps to floor lamps. The Artemide Tolomeo Micro table lamp is the compact version that fits a small desk or a nightstand. It is precise, almost indestructible and quietly beautiful.
Flos Arco: the statement floor lamp
Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, the brothers behind some of the best Italian design of the 20th century, wanted a ceiling light you did not have to wire into the ceiling. Their answer, designed in 1962 for Flos, is the Arco: a long steel arc that swings a shade over a table from a block of white Carrara marble. The marble is the counterweight, and it has a hole through it so it can be lifted with a pole slid through the middle. The Arco is big and expensive, and it needs space. In the right room it is the whole design. It is also among the most copied lamps in the world, so buy through Flos or an authorized dealer.
&Tradition Flowerpot: the pop icon
Verner Panton, the Danish designer known for bold color and space-age shapes, designed the Flowerpot in 1968, and it captures the optimism of the era in two simple half-spheres facing each other. The lower shade hides the bulb and reflects the light back into the upper one. The Danish company &Tradition has produced it since 2011 in pendant, table, wall and portable versions, including the cordless VP9, and in a wide range of colors from cream to bright orange. It is the friendliest lamp here, and it plays well with the 1970s and 1980s mood that has also brought back Memphis design.
How to choose
Start with the job. A pendant like the PH 5 belongs over a table. A task lamp like the Type 75 or Tolomeo belongs where you read, write or work. A floor lamp like the Arco or a large Akari sets the mood of a whole room. Then think about the light itself. Henningsen and Noguchi both cared about soft, diffuse light that flatters people, while the task lamps are about putting a precise pool of light exactly where you need it.
Finally, buy the real thing. Every lamp here is copied, and the copies rarely match the quality, the light or the resale value of the original. The companies above all sell through authorized dealers, and a genuine design lamp tends to hold its value for decades, which is the same reason people save up for an Eames Lounge Chair. For the thinking behind objects built to last, see our guide to Dieter Rams's 10 principles of good design, and if your desk needs a matching upgrade, the Studio Neat story is a good place to start.
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