Reading lights are essential whenever you are planning an interior that contains comfy chairs or sofas. A room in a home should never be lit so brightly that you can read (or embroider) anywhere you like in it, without specific lighting to help you to do so. It would be unpleasant. It would also be morally unacceptable because of the amount of energy that would be wasted.
So reading lights ("letture") are floor-standing task lights (lower than a standard lamp)—often a spotlight on a pole. They go behind or beside the comfy chair (or are positioned to light the music on a piano, for example). The older your clients, the more they matter, because eyesight deteriorates (as wisdom increases) with age.
So, what do you need to know about them?
Traditionally, a standard lamp, or a pair of table lights on a console behind a sofa, have provided the light for someone to read by. But dedicated readng lights (letture) have been around for just as long. Here is a typical one, the Studio Swing Arm from Visual Comfort:
Unlike almost all other decorative light fittings, reading lights should be unobtrusive—quietly and politely going about their business. This means that some of the simplest and best designs are able to fit into many different styles of interior. Fa from GOFI, for example (which does not only come in yellow!):
Fa also demonstrates something to be mindful of when specifying letture—the foot. You want the light to be able to get close to the chair. So that they are stable, the base should be small and heavy (like Fa), or broad and flat (to extend under the sofa), as in this floor light in Casablanca's Clavio series:
Like desk lights, reading lights are not connected to control systems, unless it is just to turn them on and off. They must be under the easy, direct control of the person reading, so that he or she can adjust the direction, and sometimes the brightness, to exactly what they want at any particular moment. Usually, there is a foot switch on the cable, and the light body can be orientated. A couple of reading lights go further, though (and are therefore much more cool!): they are controlled by a lazy wave of the hand under the luminaire. No need to disturb the dog! Meet the Sento Lettura from Occhio...
...and the Tubus from Casablanca:
In fact, reading lights are so like desk lights that many are an existing desk light design mounted on a stick, particularly where those desk lights come with a variety of other feet (e.g. a base for use on the desk, and a clamp for the edge of the desk, and a wall bracket). This is an excellent solution from a functional point of view, but most letture in this category can look too office-like for a residental interior. Nevertheless, here are three good examples.
Tolomeo from Artemide probably comes in more forms than any other design of light (and they are always good value, too). The Tolomeo Basculante moves seemlessly out of the office by having two non-office shade options: parchment or satin:
Fortebraccio from Luceplan has a really big handle to make sure you have no difficulty gettng the light exactly where you want it:
And their Berenice (which we use at home) is so slim it's almost not there. It is lifted by having a choice of colours for the back of the light body, which also makes Berenice less office-like.
Many task lights use counterweights to balance the weight of the light body, pivoting a straight bar part way along its length. Avoid these, unless the rearward extension is never going to get in the way. Here a Copérnica from Marset is placed where it doesn't:
A practical problem with reading lights (and standard lamps), if they are in the middle of the room and there is no adjacent power socket, is the trailing cable. A simple way round this is to use cordless reading lights. This is estro’s Kuma:
We are so used to recharging phones, bluetooth speakers, &c. now, and it is no more trouble to recharge a floor light. Ambra is light enough to be easily carried to wherever this is being done, as is Tobias Grau's Parrot:
So, that's why reading lights are so useful, those are the issues you should look out for, and that's how to deal with them. In Part II, I'll show you some interesting examples by top designers, and by some mavericks. In preparing for these emails, I've put together a classified list of over 50 good reading lights, so if you are wondering what to specify, do get in touch.
Do click here for part II of this review of reading lights. in which we look at some particularly fine examples.
