Industrial Lighting

So, the lighting in the loft. As you may remember this project was finished in the summer and I have published images of it previously (industrial style loft conversion). It was basically all there but just needed a few extra touches to finish it off. Knowing me that day will never actually come – the one where I say: “No no it’s completely finished, wouldn’t add a thing, leave it exactly as it is. For ever.”

But, that aside, although we have two gorgeous desk lamps (Jielde), the lighting is, shall we say, intimate. Which, as the days get shorter and the nights get longer, has made me realise that we needed more.

We had always intended to buy a floor lamp to go behind the sofa. Only in my head (and on my Pinterest boards) it was going to be the Arco floor lamp by Flos. Only that’s £1,500 so that was always going to remain only in my head. Actually, I measured one in a shop the other day and it wouldn’t have fitted under the sloping ceiling anyway so yaboo sucks to you Flos light.

That did leave us with a gap though, and, for a while, nothing else seemed quite right. Then one day himself came home from work saying he’d seen a cool light in a shop window as he went past on the bus. Well there you go. And here it is.

It came from moseyhome in Finsbury Park (28 Stroud Green Road) and cost £300. We changed the original plastic flex to red cord from Dowsing and Reynolds, which has totally transformed it. You can see, in the close up shot that the switch is half white and half red so that was the idea behind choosing red.

We were thinking of painting the bottom black to tidy it up a bit but a) it doesn’t show behind the sofa and b) I now quite like the original patina of it. What do you think? Paint or not?

So then we come to the second light. It was still a bit dark in there. The new floor light is great for sitting on the sofa reading magazines  researching features but it can be a bit Dickens in a garret when you have only the two desk lights.

Then, after a meeting on the Tottenham Court Road the other day, I saw this in the window of Dwell. Now, I’ll be honest here, Dwell isn’t a shop I have been to. I have written before about why I would rather buy a new design than a copy of an original and I wasn’t sure that it was the shop for me.

But this was in the window and it was jolly and red and it called to me. Yes it did. And so I went in. And I was hardly through the door and they offered me 10 per cent off for basically just showing up. In the end I got 15 per cent off because I took the one from the window, which is a little bit battered but that suited me. I was slightly vexed that they wouldn’t throw in the lightbulbs (it needs 11 for anyone who can’t be bothered to count) so most of the discount went on that but hey ho, apparently you can’t have everything. Who knew?

I’m aware that it might be a bit of a cliche and that I might be behind the curve with this but I don’t care. It gives out the perfect amount of light and I think it looks great in the loft.

Now I’ll have no excuse for knocking off work at 3 o’clock because it’s too dark to see properly. And the chair below? This is what happened when the 12yo was given a label maker a couple of years ago and this chair was his brother’s desk chair. If you are anything like me (and some of you are) you will have noticed something stuck to the chair in the earlier photographs and in case your zoom wasn’t up to it I thought I would just show you.

Right, I must work. With all the lights on.