Metify Homes Blog

A floor lamp is one of the few pieces of lighting you can buy today and use tonight. No electrician, no drilling, no chasing wires through a wall. That is also why people buy the wrong one: it looks good in the photo, it arrives, and then it is too short beside the sofa or it throws light on the ceiling when you wanted it on your book.

Most rooms in our homes are lit from one point: a tube light on the wall or a panel in the ceiling. It is bright, it is flat, and at night it makes even a well-furnished room look like an office. A floor lamp fixes that faster than anything else, because it puts a second, lower source of light in the room.

The short answer: most floor lamps are 5 to 6 feet tall (150 to 180 cm), and the right height for yours depends on whether people near it are sitting or standing. The rule that settles almost every case is this one.

A small room looks smaller when its corners are dark. The eye reads the lit area as the room and treats everything in shadow as if it were not there. Put a lamp in one corner and the wall behind it comes back, and the room feels a foot wider than it did.

The honest answer is that it depends on one thing you already know: whether there is a table where you want the light.

For most rooms, the centre of a wall light should sit 5 to 5.5 feet from the floor (150 to 170 cm). That puts it at about eye level for a standing adult, which is where a wall light looks right and where you are least likely to stare into the bulb.

Wall lights are the most misused lights in our houses. Builders put one on every wall at random heights, fit whatever was cheapest that month, and the owner never switches them on. That is a pity, because a wall light in the right place does something a ceiling light cannot: it puts light at face level and makes a plain painted wall look like part of the design.

You want a light on a wall that has no electrical point. The house is finished, the paint is new, and nobody wants to cut a channel through plaster for one fitting. Or you rent, and the landlord would not allow it anyway.

A lamp that is the wrong size for its table is one of those things you notice every day without knowing why the room looks off. Too small and it looks like a toy. Too tall and you get the bulb in your eyes every time you lie down.

A table lamp is two decisions stacked on top of each other: the base and the shade. The base is what you see in daylight. The shade is what you see at night, because it decides what the light looks like. Most people choose on the base alone and are then surprised by the lamp after dark.

Red or amber. If you want one answer, that is it. A dim red or deep yellow light is the kindest to sleep, and blue or bright white is the worst.

The most common chandelier mistake is not a bad design. It is the wrong size. A fanoos that looked grand in the shop hangs in a double-height lobby like an earring, or one bought for a 12 by 14 lounge fills the room so completely that tall guests duck.

Chandelier, fanoos, jhumar, jhoomar. Four words, one thing: a decorative light with several lamps that hangs from the ceiling and is meant to be looked at. Shops in Lahore and Karachi mostly say fanoos, online stores say chandelier, and your nani probably says jhumar.

A chandelier is the only light in the house that can hurt someone if it is installed badly. It is heavy, it hangs over people’s heads, and it is connected to mains power. So start with this: hanging one is a job for an electrician, and for a large piece, an electrician with a helper.

The bottom of a hanging light should be 30 to 36 inches (75 to 90 cm) above the top of the dining table. Measured from the floor, that is roughly 5 to 5.5 feet, since most tables are about 30 inches high.

Most kitchen lighting ideas online are photographed in kitchens where nobody fries anything. Ours are different. A Pakistani kitchen sees tarka twice a day, steam from the pressure cooker and a film of oil on every surface near the stove by the end of the week.

A hanging light has two measurements that matter: how wide it is, and how far down it comes. Get both right and almost any design will look good. Get either wrong and the best design in the shop will look like it was meant for another room.

The best outdoor light is not a brand or a shape. It is the one that is built for the exact spot you are putting it in. A light that lasts ten years under a covered porch can fail in one monsoon on an open boundary wall.

The gate is the only part of your house that most people ever see. Neighbours, delivery riders, guests looking for the address at night: all of them judge the house from the street, and after dark the gate lights are most of what there is to judge.

Drive through any new housing society at night and you will see two kinds of houses. The first has one tube light on the porch and looks shut. The second is lit like a wedding hall, with colour-changing strips on every edge. In between are a few houses that simply look good, and they nearly always have fewer lights than you would guess.

A console table is a long, narrow table that stands against a wall. That is all it is. You will also hear it called a hallway table, a foyer table, an entrance table or a sofa table, depending on where it ends up. The furniture is the same.

A media console is the low, long cabinet that sits under a television. It either carries the TV on its top or stands below a wall-mounted one, and it hides the things that come with a TV: the cable or set-top box, the Wi-Fi router, a gaming console, a soundbar and a tangle of wires.

Walk into most houses in Pakistan after dark and every room is the same colour: a bright, bluish white. It is the light we grew up with, first from tube lights, then energy savers, and now LEDs bought in the same “daylight” shade out of habit.