Vintage View: The fab five lamps for your home office this spring/summer

Kya deLongchamps shines a light on five sleek lamps for the home office 

Kartell's Aledin whcich comesd in Crystal, Smoke, Blue, Green and Amber for €235.

AESTHETICALLY, iconic desk lamps continue to rise like small brilliant suns from the period covering the mid-1950s to the 1970s, with the odd quirky nudge into the fashionable oddities of the 1980s. 

These new luminaries take the best from the past and put a new shine on your work with 21st-century detailing from wireless phone charging to silken dimming, LED economy and multiple posing positions to match the task.

With eyeballing paperwork having given way to back-lit screens, the actual, head-down, task light job of a lamp may be more casual/part-time than it was. Still, apart from picking up on occasional material documents, the focus of the shade can be bounced off the table surface or wall to scatter light, balancing the searing, exhausting blue light from your monitor. 

You can use a flexible lamp with enough diffusion to make you attractively “high and light” during Zoom meetings too, using a digital background to clear up the domestic devastation. 

Here are five contenders with performance to match their design chops.

The Paulmann Numis LED retails at €184.90

Fashioned on industrial lab bench pantograph lamps, with large disk heads that clamped to desks from the 1930s forward, the Paulmann Numis LED has all the smarts you need for online video chats and working through a day of shifting natural light. With three joints, the tune in white function allows the light colour to be set in the range from warm white (2,700K) to daylight (6,500K), and the brightness can be infinitely dimmed using the integrated touch dimmer. 

It includes a Qi charging function in the base, so your smartphone can be charged without wires by just setting it down while you work. This really is becoming an expected standard in any very flat-based desk lamp in the WFH age.

€184.90, lights.ie.

For something heavier and more industrial recalling Spanish Fase, look into the open doughnut head of the highly decorated Link Task Light by Peter Stathis for Pablo Designs, c.2008.

From €475, store.pablodesigns.eu.

The Dyson Lightcycle Task from €499.99.

Dyson could have been said to have wildly over-engineered the DC06 Lightcycle, a slightly fugly lamp, but it’s fascinating and highly communicative nonetheless. Who else would include GPS tracking to monitor daylight, adjusting the colour temperature and brightness every 60 seconds to spare your eyes? 

I have no idea why you would fiddle your way through this, but the lamp has app operation from your phone, together with cooling Heat-Pipe technology to keep your energy-saving, expensive LEDs cool and less likely to blow over a period of 60 years. 

A multi-functional pillar of professionals, the Dyson Morph version of the Light Cycle with its Bubble Optic, glare-free lens, can adapt to task, Indirect, Feature and Ambient, and will take your age, mood and sleep times into its programmable features. 

Task from €499.99, floor-lights from €749.99, dyson.ie.

Where your workspace is immersed in your living space, you need to tread carefully in terms of melding furniture with a corner of office practicality. There are plenty of lamps that retain that domestic elegance while quietly serving their purpose. 

The Flos Tab by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby which will set you back €283.

The Flos Tab by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby c.2011, has a folded fin of powder-coated aluminium in “open book” form that’s handsome, discreet and sculptural, taking the glare out of an economical LED performer that should last 25,000 hours. The head of the Tab rotates through your challenges through a full 90. 

Available in white, black, matt blue and dark green and ideal if you like a Bauhaus vibe. €283 on offer in black from amara.com.

Spiny, spare desk lamps with all the angles don’t come any wispier or wittier than Kartell’s Aledin (pictured at top of page). In terms of operation and eye-grabbing 1980s good looks, it’s a bit of a bargain. Small headed lamps are far less intrusive on a desktop. 

Set high they throw a wide beam, set low they can stare unblinking into a sentence. I really love the latent glamour of the DEC version with its cone-shaped diffuser and faceted decoration. It runs on nothing with 5.6w LED lamp bulbs, and features two polycarbonate arms riding on aluminum rods – quality all the way. 

If they could only include a wireless charger for a mobile – it would be perfect. €235 in Crystal, Smoke, Blue, Green, Amber, lamptwist.com and all Kartell stockists.

If you like biddy-bonnets, explore the Tolomeo line by Michele De Lucchi & Giancarlo Fassina c.1989 for the vintage lighting house of Artemide (Italy).
From €180, multiple suppliers.

Fight off the SAD blues with Lumie' SAD desk lamp, available from €166.50,

For anyone who suspects they suffer from Seasonal Affected Disorder, there are a range of lamps to lift the mood and improve concentration and productivity like a dose of bright sunshine. Any SAD lamp on your desk (look up Carex, Theralite for all you need to know), should block 99.3% of UV and project light downward in a broad illumination as recommended by specialists for maximum effectiveness. 

With touch-control light levels and adjustable neck for reading and task lighting, the Lumie SAD desk lamp offers blue-enriched white LEDs for effective SAD light therapy (10,000 lux at 20cm distance). If you only have half an hour and are stuck at your desk, you can pop off the diffuser and take in a beneficial half hour at a higher luminosity to fight the blues. 

This model has a rather nice retro styling too in white with a simple bendy stalk. €166.50, lifepharmacy.ie.