Another great addition of the arc floor lamp is stylistic. We live in cubes and rectangular boxes, but there’s no need to let our furniture constantly accent that fact. Instead, the sleek curvature of an arc floor lamp can lend roundness to an otherwise rectangular space. Becuase of the funcion of an arc floor lamp, the lamp draws the eyes around its base toward its head in a sleek curve. Using arc floor lamps along with other non-linear additions like rounded tables and chair backings can lend a softness to a room.

In fact, the arc floor lamp has proved to be such a popular style, that it has started to develop sub-styles of its own:

Arco Floor Lamps

The Classic Arco Lamp is mad of stainless steel with a nickel finish. It begins from a marble base, and then enters a single deeply curved arc, ultimately resolving itself into vertical light centered on your target. This is the original style produced by Castigilioni and Giacomo, whose only variations are in color. Although these lamps were created in 1962, they seem just as appropriate today as they did fifty years ago.

Arc Style Floor Lamps

Arc Floor Lamps made similarly to the Arco Floor lamps are called “Arc Style Floor Lamps”. They are like “sparkling wine” to “champagne”. However, arc style floor lamps have a number of advantages. First, they are often less expensive than the “brand name” Arco lamps. Second, free from the “official” Arco brand, they are free to experiment with different styles that might be appropriate to your home. An arc style floor lamp will often be a better fit for your home and wallet.

Spider Arc Style Floor Lamps

Recently, designers have begun to experiment even more with arc style floor lamps. One of the most popular recent changes is the Spider Arc Style Floor Lamp . A Spider Arc Style Floor Lamp has several different heads, each with its own bulb and shade. The various arms of the lamp look like those of a spider, giving it its arachnine name. Part of the change is stylistic. The several heads look almost organic, like a plant more than a lamp. It is great for those who wish to replace the geometry of standard lamps with something appearing more alive. It is also a functional change. The many different heads can be independently adjusted, allowing you to light an entire area with direct light. These lamps have become very popular, often outselling the traditional style.

In general, funky lamps are used on top of a framework of standard design. Let me explain. In general, one cannot have exciting accenting unless there is some sort of intelligible or familiar structure that underlies it. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be fun, but just pure chaos. Instead funkiness exists in the contrast between the contemporary designer and the traditional framework he or she is working within. As a result, when applying modern floor lamps to your home, you should consider just what aspects of your room are intended to serve as the conventional backdrop and which parts are to serve as the contemporary accents.

Funky lighting can come in just about any form, to the point that there is little that can be said that is specific about them. However, there are some trends. First, using LED lighting in a floor lamp is an increasingly important trend, because LED lights provide a wider array of colors and provide shapes of light that people are not accustomed to. Neon and other noble gasses are also used, but they are expensive, so be aware of that. Another popular trend is the use of chrome. This actually goes back about eighty years, but the ways in which chrome can be molded to appear as though it is almost liquid metal has always made it popular as a form of accents. Another option is to blur the line between floor lamps and table lamps, having floor lamps with tables on them or that stick out from behind tables.

In some ways, the more readily available a lamp is, the less funky it is, as it will be more common and therefore less subversive. Nonetheless, if you are going for a funky style, you can find a manufacturer that will produce just the right lamp. If you are looking for new lamps, you might look into Groggy or Lumisource, each of which provide a number of different styles. If you are looking for older lamps, then you can find a wide product selection by choosing to shop at the many antique stores. Antiques are not just old, dusty Victorian lamps. In fact, a number of lamps inspired by the Art Deco movement will be right at home in the most fun and decorative environment.

Funky floor lamps can provide you with some excellent options for making your living space more fun. Using them is a matter of understanding how the funky interacts with the traditional.

What is it about wood, then, that makes it such a good material for the construction of lamps? The first characteristic is the appearance of the material itself. Metal by its nature is almost futuristic. It is shiny and alien, and we have no history with it until only a few thousand years ago. It has the kind of foreignness that makes the T-1000 so frightening in the Terminator movies. In fact, because of the way it reflects light, it doesn’t even have its own native appearance. It needs to borrow its appearance from nearby objects by distortedly reflecting them. As a result metal makes your room look alien.

On the other hand, wooden material is purely natural and (mostly) retains its original grain, reminding us not of some alien world but of the natural world. Although the wood is no longer technically alive, it brings a sense of life into our manufactured homes by bringing in an organic material. We are tricked into feeling that we are outside, interacting with the natural environment, something that is naturally comforting. In effect, having wooden lamps (or any wooden item) provides us with a sense of comfort.

The material itself has some important possibilities, as it can be carved into just about any shape, unlike ceramics or metal that need to be molded. This can provide you with floor lamps that are circle, curved and so forth, but they can also be carved into just about any shape, as wood is wonderfully resilient. I remember the wooden lamp I had as a child with a wooden statue as a part of the base, and it still stays with me. Any lamp manufacturer that is using wood will try to maximize the power of the material.

The shade, too, can be made out of wood, though wooden lamp shades are trickier than wooden bases. The main issue is that the wood alters the quality of the light. Unlike a paper or cloth shade, wood doesn’t allow quite as much light through, no matter how thin you make the shade. Furthermore, it necessarily colors the light, usually making it brown. If you are trying to create a softly-lit room, then this type of coloration might be just perfect for your needs. However, if you are trying to provide brighter light, you might be better off with a wooden base and some other material for the shade.

Wooden floor lamps bring a little of the outdoors inside. You might find them to be a wonderful contribution to your home’s decor.

By far the most common use of rustic lighting is in a rustic lodge, cottage or log cabin. These will often be used as a way of blending table and floor lamps in with the rest of the decor, including of course the cabin itself. Wooden rustice lamps will fit in especially well in log cabins, but this is not the only possible combination. Wrought iron floor lamps will well match the cooking and other metal tools that are often important parts of the decorations of cottages. Using rustice floor lamps in this way will prevent you from having to make tough decisions between functionality and beauty, as rustic lamps provide both.

Inside a home, rustic lamps can still provide excellent decotation. However, they play a quite different role than they wood at the cottage. Unlike at a cottage, where the purpose of rustic floor lamps and rustice table lamps is to blend in, at home the purpose is for them to stand out. Their fundamental purpose is to be decorative. This gives you some more leeway in the type of materials that are used, as you can lean more towards the purely decorative. For instance, lamps with a more Western theme may provide a nice decorative object for your room.

There are some other important style options to consider. Perhaps surprisingly, the shade on rustic floor lamps are often quite varied. Some are rustice in themselves, made out of thin, translucent woods, but others are simply more akin to other floor lamp shades, using a translucent paper of some sort. The reason for this variation is that, on a rustic lamp, it is the stem that will stand out, not the shade (completely the opposite of almost any other lamp). As a result, most rustic table and floor lamps will simply used conservative floor lamps that don’t really stand out at all.

When choosing to shop for a rustic floor lamp, there are a few things that you should consider. As mentioned above, look for one made out of proper materials. Second, look for a manufacturer who has some specialty in rustic floor lamps. If you purchase from just any manufacturer, you’ll likely get something that is made of the right materials, but lacks flair. Don’t feel you need to spend all of your money, though. A lot of private manufacturers will sell rustic floor lamps at the same prices as some of the more conventional manufacturers.

Nonetheless, pharmacy floor lamps do have their origin in the pharmacy. Those whose jobs involved mixing together precise amounts of potentially dangerous substances needed to have bright light with which to work. Moreover, because pharmacists stand up while working (there are a number of reasons for this), they needed precisely calibrated light that wouldn’t get in their way.

As a result, what is now called a “pharmacy floor lamp” can perhaps be better called an adjustable floor lamp. Usually, a pharmacy floor lamp will have two swivels. The first will be at the very top of the stem of the lamp, so that you can turn the head in different directions. The second will be half-way down the head of the lamp as an “elbow”, so to speak, allowing you to swivel the head in both directions. The combination of the two allows you to focus the light on any spot under the radius of its head, giving it flexibility.

Other pharmacy floor lamps mimic this flexibility by having a swivel. That is, rather than simply having an arm at the top, it has a bar that goes across the top and can either be rotated, raised or lowered. Just like with the double-jointed head, this allows you to shine the light in any area that can be reached by the lamp.

Pharmacy floor lamps provide flexible and directed light. As mentioned above, it is flexible, because of the swiveling head. It is also directed, pointing downwards, and generating a beam that is fairly strong. Most pharmacy floor lamps have heads that are opaque, meaning that very little light escapes except downward, providing almost no ambient lighting for your room. Many pharmacy floor lamps actually use halogen bulbs, which provides even more directed light than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs would.

Perhaps the most common use for pharmacy floor lamps is as a reading lamp. Because these floor lamps can be placed behind a chair, but can still have the arms go over the back of the chair, it is quite easy to provide solid, directed reading light for whatever material you happen to be enjoying. In many ways, a pharmacy floor lamp is better than a table lamp, whose downward light usually doesn’t reach all the way to the chair and, if it did, would look awkward.

Another use is for ambient lighting. This might sound strange, as I just said that directed light makes poor ambient lighting. This is true, so long as it is not diffused off of anything. Because pharmacy floor lamps are so directed and so flexible, they are wonderful for splashing light off of walls, generating attractive light objects and creating ambient lighting for the entire room.

The flexibility allows these light objects to be generated at exactly the angle that you want. So, for example, you could create a beam of light that runs directly parallel to the stairs, or on that runs perpendicular to the ceiling. Really it is up to you. Because the beams from pharmacy lights are so strong, they produce clear light objects and attractive ambient light when reflected.

A pharmacy floor lamp, therefore, can serve many different roles within your home. It can serve for reading or for ambient lighting. The only thing you won’t be using it for is for a pharmacy!

One primary issue with kids lamps are with nursery lamps generally is that children, and especially small children, have the tendency to pull things over. Lamps, on the other hand, are portable objects (in fact, one term for them is “portable light fixtures”). Portable + children = potential disaster for kids. Nonetheless, many families wish to have lamps in their children’s rooms and there is good reason to do so. The sole use of overhead lighting can be very unattractive on faces, and will not show off an attractive nursery.

When children are very small, a good choice might be table lamps rather than floor lamps. If placed high enough on a desk or other surface, the child won’t actually be able to reach the light source (unless they pull over the desk). This can provide child-proof lighting, so long as you also protect the outlet. However, children will quickly be able to reach the top of desks, and you will quickly be put in the position where there are not really any safe places for a table lamp.

However, a sturdy floor lamp can provide exactly this safety that you might be looking for. In fact, this might seem counter-intuitive. At first, it might seem that you would want a lighter floor lamp, so that if it falls, no one would get hurt. However, you are better off ensuring that the lamp does not fall over in the first place. A lamp with a sturdy and heavy base is your safest bet. Combine this heavy base with a lighter stem, and you will have a lamp that will be relatively safe for kids rooms.

There are a number of different styles of lamp available. The most popular among children is usually lamps connected to some of their favorite cartoon characters. It is relatively easy to find lamps that have cartoon characters simply drawn on the shade, but why not be more creative? Looking around, you can often find lamps that have these characters are drawn or molded directly onto the stemp of the lamp. This provides an object of fun for kids, who might even try to integrate the lamp into their playtime.

If you are looking for a lamp that is more suited to a stylish nursery, there are a number of different designer childrens floor lamps available. Gucci, Maura Daniel and more will provide nursery lighting that will be both appropriate to children but stylish in themselves.

Picking the right kids floor lamp is a matter of combining safety and style. However, they are one of the most interesting types of floor lamps currently available.

Curiously, unlike, for example, Tiffany-style lamps, Stiffel lamps do not denote a particular design of lamp. In fact, there is no style of lamp that was ever initiated by Stiffel. On the contrary, Tiffel took the lamps that were already available, and tweaked the styles. He took those lamps and tried to make them look more classy, often improving the quality of materials, the level of ornamentation and even the type of craftsmanship applied to the lamps. As a result, there are Tiffel lamps available for all tastes and style choices.

New Stiffel Lamps

The current series of lamps from Stiffel leans toward the more traditional forms of decor. This “Expressions” series includes a high quality brass base that has been attractively moulded into a series of surprising yet attractive curves. They have done a very good job of keeping some of the geometric shapes of more modern design with the more natural flow of more traditional designs. The lampshades are in a surprising white, which both makes the lamp feel more lively while providing your room with a higher quality of useful lamps.

Vintage Stiffel Lamps

Although there are some Stiffel lamps still in production, the best source of them will still almost always be online. Stiffel has cycled through a number of different styles over the years, and therefore, you are more likely to find the Stiffel lamp that you are looking for if you search through vintage lamps. Be aware, though, that there really isn’t such a thing as a Stiffel-style lamp. Stiffel is a brand known for its quality of production and materials, not for its particular style. Therefore, you should be wary of anything claiming to simply by Stiffel “style”.

Recognizing Stiffel Lamps

Despite their being the most well-respected producers of lamps in the last fifty years, Stiffel lamps can actually be tricky to recognize, at least for non-antiques dealers. Since they have a wide variety of styles over a number of decades and since there is no signature style, how does one even know which lamps are Stiffel? Fortunately, there are three ways to tell. First, Stiffel lamps come with a small, foil signature that says “Stiffel Lamp Company” right on it. Unfortunately, this signature often came off. If there is no foil, look for the word “Stiffel Lamp Company” or the initials “SLC” on the lamp itself. Most lamps don’t have it, but some do. Finally, open up the base of the lamp to look for “Stiffel Lamp Company” or “SLC” on the inside. Unfortunately, when purchasing a lamp, many dealers won’t let you open it. However, never buy a lamp that someone claims is a Stiffel lamp without proof that it is such.

A “vintage” floor lamp is any lamp that is no longer produced and must be acquired second-hand. The term simply developed as a result of the stigma around “second hand”. In general, a vintage floor lamp is also considered “antique” if it is over 50 to 100 years old. The reason for the variation is that 50 years is generally considered antique by antiques dealers, while 100 years is the number used by customs agents. A lamp from the 1970s, therefore, is “vintage”, while a lamp from the 1940s is both “vintage” and “antique”.

Acquiring Vintage Floor Lamps Online

Because vintage floor lamps are no longer produced, it is nearly impossible to find them for sale on sites that sell large numbers of goods like Amazon. It is simply not economical for them to set up an entire page to sell a single item, especially if that item is not particularly valuable. Instead, the best places to acquire vintage floor lamps online is on auction sites like ebay and classified sites like craigslist. Note, however, that classified sites are often very difficult to browse, especially since you won’t usually know exactly what you are looking for.

Acquiring Vintage Floor Lamps Offline

The best source of vintage floor lamps is almost always offline. You can generally acquire antique and near-antique vintage floor lamps at antique dealers in your area. Vintage lamps including vintage floor lamps are some of the best selling items at antique stores, precisely because of how they anchor the decor for an entire room. You’ll find many styles, though be aware that prior to the Second World War, vintage lamps can become quite expensive. The rise of suburban living generated an increased supply of floor lamps, and this translates into cheaper lamps today.

Acquiring Cheap Vintage Floor Lamps

Non-antique vintage floor lamps are often quite a bargain, usually selling for cheaper even than new lamps. A great source of vintage floor lamps that are not antique are both so-called “flea markets” and also yard sales. There you will find numerous styles of non-antique floor lamps that can be purchased, often many more styles than are available from modern distributors. Plus, each time you look, you’ll find more styles and options. Shopping for vintage floor lamps is an adventure in itself, and hunts like this are part of what makes shopping so much fun!

Electrical Issues

Note that vintage floor lamps often have electrical problems, and antique ones may not even be compatible with modern sockets or voltage. If you buy your vintage floor lamp from a licenced antiques dealer, ask whether or not the lamp needs rewiring. If you don’t buy it from a licenced antiques dealer, don’t ask them; they don’t know. When you get a vintage floor lamp, take it to an electrician to have a look at it to see if it is safe. Rewiring of lamps is very inexpensive, and even after rewiring, vintage floor lamps are quite often less expensive than it would have been to buy a new lamp.

Tiffany style floor lamps were originally developed as a part of the Art Nouveau movement, largely a reaction to the architectural and stylistic brutality of the industrial revolution. Instead, the Art Nouveau movement focussed on using the materials of the industrial revolution, but with curved shapes and floral and organic themes. Louis Comfort Tiffany designed what came to be called “Tiffany Lamps” based on this inspiration. As his father was Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany and Company, he had a ready-made venue to sell his new design.

What defines a Tiffany Style Lamp the use of stained glass in the shades of the lamp. Tiffany, faithful to the Art Nouveau movement, populated the glass with floral and leaf patterns. As church-builders had done for centuries, stained glass affects the quality of the light, muting it and removing its harshness. It also provides different colored light to different portions of the room, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. Tiffany Style Lamps, then, not only soften the industrial materials, but the entire room.

The style was immediately popular, and Tiffany lamps became some of the most sought-after lamps in the world. They changed the very feel and appearance of the home. Soon, other companies started making stained-glass shaded lamps inspired by the Art Nouveau movement, and they have stayed one of the most popular styles to this day. The difference between a Tiffany Lamp and a Tiffany Style Lamp is that a Tiffany Lamp is actually designed by Tiffany & Company, while a Tiffany Style Lamp is any lamp with a stained-glass shade.

Traditional Tiffany Style Floor Lamps

A traditional Tiffany Style Floor Lamp will have a solid base from the shade to the ground, usually made of a metal such as bronze. It will also have a traditionally oriented, stained-glass lamp shade that focusses the light from the bulb on the ground below the lamp, while providing a smaller ray of light to the ceiling. A good example of the traditional style is the Mission Tiffany French Bronze Floor Lamp. It retains both the traditional materials, orientation and themes of Mr. Tiffany’s vision.

Torchiere Tiffany Style Floor Lamps

One of the most popular styles of Tiffany Style Floor lamps is the “torchiere” style. These lamps have an inverted lampshade, and rather than cast their primary light downward, they instead cast it upward, onto the ceiling. Such lamps lend a room a theatrical feel, and the lights resemble a “torch”, from which they get their name. The Torchiere Tiffany floor lamp dragonfly design stained glass provides a good example of the kinds of natural themes present in the stained glass, in this case, a dragonfly theme.

Contemporary Tiffany Style Floor Lamps

The Tiffany Style Floor Lamps have blended with modern tastes as well, producing the hybrid contemporary tiffany style floor lamp. These hybrid lamps will pick up the shapes and oriental themes of contemporary lamps, but employ a stained glass lampshade in or to create a softening effect. This combines both the rich stylistic options of contemporary lamps with the softened lighting of a Tiffany style lamp. A good example of this combination is the Contemporary Floor Lamp with Tiffany Style Shade , which is a direct fusion of the two styles.

The style of contemporary floor lamps has its origins in the Art Deco movement in the 1920s and 30s. Though most of our other furniture has moved away from this style, contemporary floor lamps have stayed consistent with this original inspiration. They are usually made of metal bases and geometric shapes, with the shades forgoing the traditional cone in favor of a rectangle box. In recent years, oriental styles have begun to affect the style of contemporary floor lamps, as the shades of many contemporary floor lamps have come to resemble the rice-paper lamps of Asia.

At the end of the day, however, floor lamps “contemporary” refers to any style of lamp that is not an attempt to emulate Nineteenth-Century decoration. It is the most varied of styles, and one can always find a contemporary lamp to suit any taste.

Art Deco Floor Lamps Contemporary

Art Deco lamps such as the Adesso Symphony Floor Lamp closely emulate the style of the Art Deco Movement. They focus on stark whites, blacks and chromes as well as geometric shapes. Like other designs from the art deco movement, they integrate mind and eye, causing us to see the world in mathematical ways. Art Deco lamps come in a variety of different shapes, but they all share the same basic properties. They are perfect for a home with a linear sense of style, or for integrating into a room where color is used to focus attention elsewhere.

Outdoor-Style Floor Lamps Contemporary

Other floor lamps, such as the Emerson Fans FL750ORB Maya Zen Contemporary Indoor Oil-Rubbed Bronze Floor Lamp take their inspiration from outdoors. Using multiple lamp heads and strong verticle poles, they provide an abundance of light and strength to your decor. The heads are often shaped to resemble those of street lamps, blurring the lines between the internal and the external. Such lamps require careful placement lest they overcome a room, but, used well, they can anchor your room’s decor, providing the entire space with a grounded feeling.

Japanese-Style Floor Lamps Contemporary

A number of models of contemporary floor lamp, such as the Yoko Japanese Design Floor Lamp , have perfectly blended their Art Deco and Asian influences. They have taken their geometric inspiration from the 1920s, and combined it with the soft light that comes from Asian shades. The results are spectacular. One has the strength of a free-standing floor lamp with the softness of paper shading. Together, they provide your room with both shape and texture, and can provide a wonderful addition to most interior styles.