The evenings are drawing in, which means the first lamp is coming on earlier and earlier. But which one do you instinctively reach for first?
Fall has lots of lovely things about it, but one of the best must be that little bit when daytime drifts into evening.
You may have been working or cooking or just pottering about, gradually failing to notice that the room is getting dark until you suddenly think: I can’t actually see anything.
Naturally, you turn on a lamp. And a curious thing is that it’s often the same one…
The lamp that signals the evening
Our theory is that the first lamp of the evening has a slightly different job from all the others. Rare is the person who has conducted a careful assessment of lumens or worked out which layer of the lighting scheme should come on first.
Rather, one reaches instinctively for it. Possibly it’s the lamp beside the sofa, or the one on the console, or the little table lamp in the corner. Whatever it is, switching it on seems to mark a change of ‘state’. That is, the room transforms from a daytime place into an evening place.
There then follows a sequence, probably something like this: (1) curtains closed; (2) work gets put away; (3) tea may possibly become wine; and (4) everyone will likely then settle into particular chairs. And all kicked off by a little click of a lamp switch.
But why that lamp?
It’s quite interesting to notice which lamp you choose first. For example, it might be the one that casts the nicest pool of light; or the one that makes one particular corner feel especially inviting. Or it could just be the one most conveniently within reach.
But, generally, we again theorize that there’s something special about that first lamp, in that it somehow gets the mood of the room right before anything else is switched on. It might even tell you more about how you really want the room to feel than the official lighting plan does.
Let the rest join in
Once the first lamp is on, the rest will surely follow as the room assembles the evening version of itself: a floor lamp in the far corner, followed perhaps by a wall light, and, if you’re eating, perhaps the pendant over the table.
That gradualness of illumination is very much part of the pleasure. Better, we’d say, than going from daylight straight to everything blazing at once. Much nicer to let the room come alive, lamp by lamp.
The everyday pleasures of lighting
There’s a tendency in the professional lighting world to think about lighting in practical and technical terms: where the fittings go, how bright they should be, what sort of bulb you need, and so on.
But there’s another side to it, to do with how lighting gets woven into the habits of a home.
It applies to any season but perhaps the fall makes us notice that more than any other time of year. For months the lamps have been almost incidental; now they’re returning to daily service and becoming ever more useful as the evenings creep forward.
The lamp you turn on first may not be the grandest or the most expensive, but somehow it has become the one that announces the beginning of the evening.
So tonight, as the light begins to go, why not take a moment to notice which lamp you reach for first?
Image top:Woman Reading by a Paper-Bell Shade by Henry Robert Morland (c.1716–1797). Credit Yale Center for British Art (Public domain)