Make or Break the Lamp - Don’t Cheap Out on Bulbs
Why are the bulbs so important?
So you just purchased your first steampunk pipe lamp, and you’re wondering what sort of bulbs should you use? This may seem like a straightforward problem. What’s the big deal anyway? It's just a bulb right?
Surely the beauty of the black iron pipe; fittings; the copper, polished brass, or nickel sockets, along with the design of the lamp itself will grab the attention and capture the admiration of your guests over whatever light bulb you use, shouldn’t it?
Does the light bulb even matter?
There are many different types of light bulbs that produce a myriad of lighting effects.
Some produce bright light that mimics daylight. These bulbs can keep you wired all night long. They can make you forget that it’s even nighttime.
Others, which happen to be our favorites, such as Edison bulbs, produce dim, yellow or orange light. These lights mimic the old look and feel of early incandescent light bulbs. When using these bulbs you know that it’s nighttime. You know it’s almost time for bed, for blue light emitted from daylight bulbs interferes with one’s ability to fall asleep more so than those that produce a color closer to red (Rogers, 2023, section “Red Light’s Impact on Sleep” para.2).
Not only can Edison bulbs help to avoid disrupting your sleep patterns as much as their brighter, blue light emitting counterparts, they also produce an old time , vintage look that can make you feel as though you're living in an earlier time in history. This is the perfect feel for the vintage style, pipe lamps that we create here at Black Iron Designs!
Does size really matter?!?!?!?
Yes… Yes it does!
Does the lamp below look good with these two small bulbs?
A 6 foot tall floor lamp with only two sockets like this one looks absolutely foolish with a couple averaged sized bulbs.
Click to Buy This Stylish, Smaller, Globe Bulb
But a smallish bulb looks great on this table lamp.
Sure a smaller bulb can look good on a table lamp, but do small, average sized bulbs ever really look good on steampunk, industrial style lamps?
The answer is no!
The bulb, in even the small table lamp pictured above, is still bigger than most bulbs. It measures 3 inches wide.
The fewer the number of bulbs the lamp can hold (number of sockets) tends to mean that each bulb needs to be bigger as well. If the big floor lamp pictured above had 5 sockets then it would look better than it did with the small bulbs but bigger is still generally better.
The word here of course is “generally.” You don’t want to use a bulb so big that it's out of proportion for the size of the lamp. The big bulbs in the floor lamp would be way too big in the table lamp.
All shapes and sizes
The Edison bulbs that look best with industrial, steampunk lamps come in three shapes, tubular, globe, and teardrop.
Let’s get totally tubular
Tubular bulbs are the long thin ones with the swirly filaments.
These bulbs look like something out of a late 1800s science lab up on the hill with electricity shooting out of a big Tesla coil. The longer tubular bulbs, those that are 10+ inches long, go best on floor lamps with three or more sockets.
Click the picture to buy the exact bulbs shown in the photo
Being thin, tubular bulbs will not look cluttered, as would large globe bulbs, when paired next to several others.
And on smaller lamps, such as table lamps, smaller tube bulbs that are 6 or 7 inches in length can look great as well if there are 2 or more sockets.
A single tube bulb, in our humble option, does not look as good as the globe or teardrop bulb.
Globe Bulbs
The general idea is large bulbs for floor lamps and smaller bulbs for table lamps. Let’s stick with this line of thinking. It works well.
Buy these gorgeous bulbs. Click the image!
If you have a floor lamp with 1 or 2 sockets then large globe bulbs work well. They take just enough attention away from the design of the lamp itself without overpowering it. But using 3 or more large globe bulbs, unless the lamp is truly massive, will do just that. They will overwhelm the beauty of the lamp and look way out of proportion.
Generally smaller bulbs go with smaller lamps right? We just read that above didn’t we? Yes, but not always.
If you have a large floor lamp with 3 or more sockets, preferably more, then small globe bulbs of say 5 to 7 inches in diameter can work really well too.
It's all about focusing enough attention on the bulbs without distracting too much from the aesthetics of the lamp.
Shed a tear for the bulb bringing up the rear
Finally, last but not the least, are tear shaped bulbs.
Click the image to buy a big teardrop bulb that would go great with a floor lamp!
The shape of these bulbs is very attractive, captivating, and overpowering. This is why we believe that subtly is best with these sorts of bulbs. Pairing up a teardrop bulb with many others will be quite the eye catcher. It will be too much of an attention grabber really. This is why these bulbs belong on lamps with one socket, whether large or small.
A big fat tear shaped bulb will grab enough attention on a big floor lamp without stealing the show and a smaller bulb will do the same on a table lamp.
To wrap up our thoughts on teardrop bulbs. Use them if you have a lamp with one socket. They are exquisite on lamps with one socket but too much when paired together.
So go buy yourself some bulbs
Well that wraps up our discussion on lightbulbs. We hope you see their importance now, for the lightbulbs that you choose can absolutely make or break the look and feel of the lamp.
If you choose your bubs based on our recommendations then we are confident that your lamps will be putting their best face forward and will wow your guests with the beauty for decades to come.
Click the affiliate links and purchase the bulbs that we mentioned here, for these bulbs are our personal favorites and we’re sure that you’ll love them too!
References
Rogers, K. (2023, June 1). How red light can affect your sleep. CNN. Retrieved May 5, 2024, from https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/01/health/red-light-therapy-benefits-sleep-wellness/index.html
