There are few things that bother me more than bad lighting–in the living room, the kitchen, and especially when I’m working at a desk. When I’m drawing, I’m annoyed to no end when shadows obscure my work surface or, worse, the light casts a glare. It makes me irrationally angry. If you’re an artist, a designer, or an armchair dabbler, I’m sure you can relate.
Enter The Light, a lamp designed for illustrators and designers. According to its inventors, it uses surgeon’s lamp technology to eliminate both shadows and glare from your work area.
For obvious reasons, surgeons require full illumination, minimum shadows, and no glare in the eyes. Their lights are designed just for that purpose, using lenses to redirect light at the right angles to create a wide and intense illumination area exclusively focused on the patient, without bathing the entire surgical theater with blinding, irritating light.
But as you probably know, common desk lamps–like the classic L-1 by Luxo–don’t do that. They usually come with an omnidirectional bulb that is partially blocked by a shade. If you want illumination over a wide area, you have to raise it over your eye level, which produces glare. And if you get it under your eye level, you get a reduced illumination area and hard shadows.
The design comes with a drawing utensil holder on its base, which also holds the lamps’ dimming control. Practical! But it’ll cost you: The lamp clocks in at $540, significantly more than the Ikea task lamp you’ve had since college, but roughly comparable to the higher-end models you’d find at Design Within Reach.
Balmuda has other beautiful and equally pricey smart inventions like The Toaster, a $220 compact toaster that can preserve the moisture in your bread as it toasts, and The Pot, a $130 electric kettle designed specifically for pour-over coffee.
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