Last week I told you how I noticed all the things that were ‘wrong’ with my bedroom while viewing it through the eyes of my guests (see my blog post here). It’s funny how you don’t notice the odd cobweb or a tea stain on the carpet until you are opening up your bedroom for others to stay in. I cleaned the bedroom all day long and even scrubbed the carpet before my pals arrived to stay for the weekend! I knew that a light bulb in one of my bedside lamps had blown so I popped to the shops to buy the right size mini-screw bulb for the lamps in preparation for my guests visit. I changed the bulb and promptly dropped the whole lamp on the floor. Oops. When I picked it up, it wouldn’t turn on at all so I changed the bulb for another new bulb, thinking that it must have blown in the fall, but still the lamp wouldn’t turn on. After a fuse change and another new bulb – just to be sure – I concluded that the lamp was broken. Whatever damage I’d done by dropping it had broken the touch-on-touch-off mechanism.
No problem, I thought, I’ll get rid of the lamp and just use the second bedside lamp. I changed the bulb and, inexplicably, it stayed on. As in, it wouldn’t turn off. Again, the touch-on-touch-off mechanism had broken so the lamp would need to be unplugged for the light to turn off. As the plug socket was behind a bookshelf, I didn’t think this would be a practical solution for my guests. I imagined them prodding about for a plug socket just as they were drifting off to sleep. So out of the two lamps I had that morning, two were broken. And my pals were arriving any minute! There was only one thing for it… borrow hubby’s desk lamp for the weekend. It worked fine with it’s ‘normal’ on/off switch but the light was a little too harsh for us to continue using it for a prolonged period of time. It’s intended for task-lighting rather than soft bedside illumination so that’s understandable but hubby ideally wants it back on his desk soon, so I need to find new bedside lamps…
I don’t want to spend a fortune and ideally, I’d just buy some lamp bases and add my nice pleated lamp-shades to them but where do you get simple lamp bases from these days? They all seem to come with shades, and the bases all look a little too big and chunky for my tiny, delicate shades. So the best idea might be to choose something completely different this time and I’m even considering floor lamps because I really like the industrial look.
I really like the idea of a soft, diffused light from a bird cage lamp and house-shaped lamps which will be calming and subtle in the bedroom. Also, I really love the quirky design of the tea-cups lamp – you know how much I love my tea! – but is it more suited to a living room or kitchen? The tripod lamp is simple and the dark wood legs will match the rest of the furniture in the bedroom. I think the idea of using an industrial-looking floor-lamp beside the bed is unusual but with the right low-watt lightbulb I think it could work well – at least I’d be able to angle the light into the right position if I were reading – but two floor lamps either side of the bed might be a little OTT and take up a lot of room. I will let you know when I make a decision and will post photos of my newly-illuminated bedroom 🙂
