A good-looking table lamp can pull double duty as a decorative element while casting your space in a warm glow. And when combined with wall sconces and pendants, it can create layers of illumination, providing different points of light in one room depending on your needs. As long as it’s small enough to sit on a tabletop — or desk or nightstand — it’s fair game. To help you find one that’s right for you, we talked to dozens of interior designers (plus Strategist staffers) about their favorites, including options that can be used as task lamps or bedside-table lights alike, all at a variety of price points. Below, 27 table lamps that are as functional as they are aesthetically pleasing. I’ve categorized them roughly by style: shaded, round, and abstract. If you’re looking for lighting with more specific uses, check out our roundups of bedside-table lamps, nightlights, and desk lamps. Or, for a roundup of our 100 favorite lighting implements of every type, visit the Strategist’s Lighting District.
Best shaded table lamps
Former Strategist senior editor Chelsea Peng first spotted these lovely portable table lamps with hand-marbled paper shades at the bar at Bad Roman. Turns out they’re from Gloucestershire-based Pooky, which makes over 500 shades in a variety of shapes (cone, drummed, scalloped), styles (pleated, woven, hardback), and prints (ikat, chevron, paisley), all priced very competitively.
Peng also saw this Vernor Panton lamp at the host stand of the new Greenpoint restaurant Lingo. It, too, is rechargeable, and comes in a dozen-plus hues.
And here’s one more really great shade I saw at the bar at Raf’s. I reached out to Post Company, the studio behind the restaurant’s design, and they told me that they got their scalloped and trimmed shades from Etsy store DuzyDesigns. At the restaurant, the lamps are actually repurposed vintage candlesticks, but Duzy sells lamp bases with its shades, too.
Annie Meyers-Shyer (Nancy Meyers’s daughter) first told us about this lamp from Zara Home in a Secret Strategist newsletter (sign up here). Made with an iron and aluminum base and topped with a cotton shade, it gives off a Diego Giacometti vibe that I love so much that I bought it immediately. Meyer-Shyer says despite its affordable price, she’s “never gotten more compliments on a lamp in my life.”
Strategist senior editor Simone Kitchens loves this stitched lamp from Santa & Cole (which she first alerted us to in the Secret Strategist). It comes in two styles, with a shorter lampshade or an elongated one, and Kitchens says that the shade casts the most beautiful light: “At night, it literally feels like our walls are glowing,” she says. “I’ve never seen a warmer light.” It’s popping up in other places, too, like Ponytail, a new store in Charleston, and this project by interior designer Jared Frank.
I love the gnome-like woven shades of these lamps from Vancouver- and Los Angeles–based Twenty One Tonnes that are made from handwoven palms leaves that perch on hand formed ceramic bases by two Oaxacan artists Belén Perez Garcia and Eligio Zárate Blanco.
Perhaps an alternative to the now ubiquitous (but no less covetable) Noguchi Akari lamps is this one from German industrial designer Ingo Maurer that curator Su Wu first told me about. I started seeing it everywhere, including on Laila Gohar’s Instagram and at Somerset House, to name just a couple. Like the Akaris, this one is also made from Japanese paper and casts a warm glow from its crinkled, oversize form.
[Editor’s note: 1001 Lights lists prices in euros, so the price shown here is an approximate conversion to U.S. dollars.]
Best round table lamps
New York Magazine features editor Katy Schneider recently got this slightly oblong globe lamp designed by Jasper Morrison as a gift and she says it looks like “a little glowy moon.”
Much more affordable but similarly moon-like is the Fado lamp from Ikea that writer Natalie So first told us about in a recent edition of the Secret Strategist. “Simple, inconspicuous, but still subtly stylish,” she told us.
Interior designer Victoria Adesanmi recommends this squat table lamp (it’s just eight inches tall) from Crate & Barrel that incorporates a round marble base and an off-center brass-finished stainless-steel shade. “The asymmetrical design is striking, and the mix of brushed metal and marble makes it a must-have for your home,” she says. “I love that this table lamp also serves as a piece of art.”
Designer and photographer Tommy Lei says the Baltra light designed by Kickie Chudikova for Gantri has quickly become his household favorite. Lei notes that this eight-inch dimmable lamp comes with “a sensible tray” (available in white, black, or persimmon), which he says is “ideal for pesky keys that somehow manage to magically disappear.” While he admits this feature makes the lamp more suited for an entryway, he proudly displays it on a bookcase. I can also see it being quite useful as a bedside nightlight thanks to its egg-shaped diffuser.
Caroline Grant and Dolores Suarez of Dekar Design recommend the Rex table lamp from Urban Electric because “it’s perfect for styling bookshelves and gives the most flattering glow,” they say. “The sleek lines add a classic-but-modern touch and it’s endlessly functional since it turns on with a single touch to the base and can be customized in different metals and colors.” The Rex, which measures nine inches in height, is also a favorite of interior designer Sasha Bikoff, who loves its “slightly-industrial-yet-warm element” and the fact that “it’s so simple yet so chic, with no buttons, knobs or switches of any kind.”
For a globe lamp that’s anything but dull, designer Ghislaine Viñas likes the playfulness of Marset’s Dipping Light by Barcelona-based designer Jordi Canudas. “It’s like a piece of candy; the green is my favorite,” she says. The just under nine-inches tall LED lamp incorporates a handblown glass diffuser painted with concentric circles (available in five festive colors) and a cylindrical brass-finished base.
Best abstract table lamps
Original Murano mushroom lamps are rare and expensive, but you can find similar, more affordable ones that take their inspiration from the ’60s classics. Strategist senior editor Jen Trolio owns a couple of these from Urban Outfitters home and particularly loves this pearlescent one that she has on her buffet in the dining room. She says the glass feels very nice and that the stripe-y, pearl, almost opaque finish casts a warm, even glow.
With an abstract, thick-legged base, this 12-inch lamp from Anthropologie has a similar effect but at a more palatable price. “It has a great shape, and the texture would play nicely off a glass- or wood-topped side table,” says Viñas. “It would be great for a traditional space needing a little modernity, and similarly the soft lines would complement any modern interior.” I personally own this lamp and love its rounded ceramic base.
Wooj’s mini version of its signature Wavy 3-D-printed lamp is one of Lei’s favorites for “a tiny corner or space.” He actually has one tucked away on a garden table under a covered patio. “It just looks sublime every time it’s turned on,” he says. “It’s super-glow-y and looks like you have a tiny jellyfish light floating around.” That glow-y quality is what makes (the full-size version) an ideal bedside-table lamp, as my colleague Erin Schwartz noted. The six-inch lamp is made of heat-resistant, corn-based plastic.
For kids, consider the groovy lava lamp that artist Julia Chiang recently bought for her younger daughter. Now, the whole family loves it.
Beagle-like in the most delightful way is Castiglioni’s Snoopy lamp, originally designed in 1967. It’s one of New York chief restaurant critic (and self-proclaimed “lamp fanatic”) Matthew Schneier’s “holy grail” items. “It’s a little marvel of pop and engineering,” he told us in the Secret Strategist. “It lists backward and looks like it shouldn’t be able to hold itself up, but it does. (NB: It weighs a ton.)”
Entler’s blobby cast-ceramic stoneware table lamps were recommended by two of our experts, Lei and production designer Anastasia White. This lamp has a more organic shape with brass hardware and accents — details White calls “modern, classic, and fun” — and a cloth-covered cord. She loves the functionality of the downward-focused light, which makes it ideal for desks, coupled with the “anthropomorphic nature of the form,” which she says “gives the sense of a creature watching over your work.” Lei agrees: “The arresting nature of the light grabs your attention immediately.” Lei prefers it in this glossy black finish, but it’s available in an array of gloss and matte glazes, including pink, yellow, chartreuse, and lavender. It comes in an 18-inch version as well.
It’s no surprise that designers love Noguchi’s Akari lamp. “It’s sculptural, creates a magical ambient light, and my favorite part — it’s anthropomorphism,” says White. Richter of White Arrow agrees: “Noguchi designs are a classic, and paper lanterns cast such a pretty glow.” The designers at Pappas Miron also love the Akari light sculptures for their form and function. Plus, they say, “The handmade rice paper glows when lit, and the spindly legs simply make us smile.” This 3A model measures 11 inches tall and is supported by a metal frame.
For lamps that don’t necessarily look like lamps, interior designer Tali Roth recommends the Gatto lamp by Achille Castiglioni. “I love this lamp because it looks like a jellyfish,” she says. “It’s seriously beautiful and gives a soft light.” It comes in two sizes: 11.8 and 22 inches.
This earthen lamp by New York studio In Common With looks like it’s wearing a fancy hat. Roth appreciates the nostalgia this dimmable lamp evokes, as well as its hard-molded clay shade and steel base. It measures nearly 13 inches tall.
Fanny Singer, founder of homeware store Permanent Collection and co-writer of The Green Spoon Substack, now owns two of these Charlotte Periand-designed swiveling lamps after her husband bought one at the Paris shop, Merci. “We bought a second one online when we realized we wanted them to be our bedside table lamps,” she told the Secret Strategist recently.
[Editor’s note: Merci lists prices in euros, so the price shown here is an approximate conversion to U.S. dollars.]
Best vintage table lamps
Bikoff loves “an out-there piece in all spaces,” and these vintage toucan lamps from 1968 fit the bill. “They have so much charisma and personality, and certainly spice up any room,” she says.
We love going into the Ikea archives and scoping out vintage lights, like the Ton lamp from the ’90s that one of our editors owns and says would be great for a kid’s room.
I personally love vintage Laurel lamps and their blobby, space-age-y glass diffusers. My parents gave me theirs (a pointed, acorn-like version), but you can find plenty of secondhand mushroom lamps online.
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