I need a new lamp for my office desk.
I browsed the internet and yes, some things are nice- but since you lot are mostly as geek and nerdy as me (but with more style!) I’d like to ask you this- what lamps do you have, or would suggest me to buy.
I still need a functional lamp! So those plexiglas panels with tie fighters or other things carved into it are not really what I need.
I would love something that can light up half a room
possibly with a remote control? (secondary importance really)
with some style but on the geeky/nerdy side of things.
best if around or under 60$.
Not going to lie I was thinking a lot about the typical banker desk lamp
Philips Hue and IKEA Trådfri is cool stuff. You can really go crazy with it because it uses the standard Zigbee protocol. Sort of like WiFi but low-power and meshed so much more scalable to many devices.
How I went from a few Trådfri bulbs to a full home automation setup.
Our entire house is/was filled with those IKEA Trådfri lights. I loved having them change color: white for the day and warm off-white for the evening. But the automation options in the app were not enough to have that happen automatically.
So I flashed Home Assistant to a Raspberry Pi to automate everything about the lights: the color very gradually changes throughout the evening, but the time and pace at which this happens varies throughout the year. Things like bathroom and toilet light brightness decrease automatically at night.
And of course, the wake-up light. This is something that was in the IKEA app, but it would only set brightness, not color.
Now for the past 4 years, we are awakened by bright cold white lights slowly becoming brighter, and I never have to change light colors manually.
Now we’re switching to Philips Hue. The IKEA lights apparently don’t behave very well in large Zigbee networks. Currently using a mix of both. We sold the IKEA hub long ago in favor of a Zigbee radio USB stick on the Pi itself so we are fully compatible with all Zigbee devices.
It’s very accessible and easy to set up these days.
One comment about the cheaper LED multi-color bulbs. If you are sensitive to flicker, double check that the bulbs you are buying specifically mention that they are flicker free.
I bought a couple of cheap multi-color bulbs for the holidays and some colors flicker so bad, I can’t use the bulb.
The flicker doesn’t show for me when looking at an object, but when I shift my view here to there, oh man… It’s like a kaleidoscope of RGB photo flashes everywhere in the room, every time I move my eyes.
My regular white LED bulbs are Philips Ultra Definitions. No flicker, good color.
My favorite type of lamp. When I finally get around to furnishing my office I’m going to have a few of those.
The best part is the way they cast light down but not up- the floor and desk area can be completely lit while the room is still kinda dark. Nice for working at night or making a midnight bathroom trip.
The banker lamps are nice. I’ve got an old one in storage in the shop. The brass is pitted a bit, but the green glass shade is fantastic.
Another very cool desk lamp is the M. G. Wheeler “Sight Light”. I’ve got one of these, and it casts light down, and leaves the room quite dim. No idea if these are available new, mine is ancient. The metal shade got HOT with old incandescent bulbs, but with LED they are perfect now.
I just hit up Facebook Marketplace. That’s how I decorated my office, including my lamps. Otherwise, I recommend Amazon or Ebay. I would recommend Walmart, but the quality has really gone downhill lately.
Works great with Alexa, Dimmable, color adjustable, but will require another app on your phone. I have a set of these in my living room as well behind the TV.
