Gleam™ Glass Bedside Table Lamp

Overhead light is the wrong light for a bedroom after ten o'clock. It comes from above, it strikes the ceiling flat and white, and it wakes you up on the way to bed when it should settle you. So most people read on a phone in the dark, which is worse for the same reason.

Gleam™ deals with that through its shape, not a setting. Two flattened domes of hand-blown opal glass are stacked like a macaron, with a pinched groove between them, and hold the bulb deep inside a double curve. The light has to pass through the wall of the glass, so at eye level you see the whole shade glowing evenly, with no filament and no hot point, even when you lie flat on the pillow next to it.

One bulb gives three colour temperatures: a low amber for winding down, a soft neutral for reading a chapter and a brighter setting for finding clothes at six in the morning. The switch on the cord cycles through them. There is no app to open, no remote to lose down the side of the bed and nothing to charge.

It really is small: 18 cm across the shade and 28 cm tall, on a slim stem of polished chrome that rises from a weighted disc base and keeps it steady when you reach past in the dark. That leaves space on a narrow nightstand for a book, a glass of water and a phone, which is usually the real limit, more than the light.

Switch it off and let the bulb cool for a few minutes before you handle the shade. Dust the glass with a dry microfibre cloth. For finger marks use a barely damp cloth and dry it at once, because opal glass shows water spots more than clear glass. Never hold the shade under a tap or spray cleaner at it; liquid reaching the lamp holder is the one thing that will ruin it. Polished chrome scratches easily, so wipe the stem and base along their length with a soft cloth and keep abrasive creams well away. Lift the lamp by the base and not the shade, and keep the USB cord back from the edge of the nightstand so that it cannot be pulled over in the dark.

Shade: thick hand-blown opal glass in the form of two stacked, flattened domes with a pinched groove at the centre. The milk-white body diffuses the bulb and does not transmit it directly, and slight variation in wall thickness near the groove is a sign of hand-blowing, not a fault. Frame: stem in polished chrome-plated steel with a machined ring detail at the foot, on a weighted round disc base. Fitting: one E27 lamp holder with a tri-colour dimming LED bulb fitted, cycling three colour temperatures from the inline switch. Power: USB cord, about 1.5 m of pale flex with the switch inline, and no internal battery. Verified dimensions: shade 18 cm diameter, 28 cm overall height. Shipping weight 1.4 kg. Two colourways, Warm Cream and Chalk White, the same apart from the tint of the glass.