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Nov 04, 2024

I’ve Brought Home Lamps From Japan and Italy. But This IKEA Globe Is My Favorite. | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Caroline Mullen Caroline Mullen is a writer focused on cleaning and organizing. Every rug in her apartment is machine-washable, but you can blame her dog for that. I love lamps—big and small, floor

By Caroline Mullen

Caroline Mullen is a writer focused on cleaning and organizing. Every rug in her apartment is machine-washable, but you can blame her dog for that.

I love lamps—big and small, floor and table, modern and traditional. I scour estate sales and shop for them when I’m traveling, like the time I risked an overweight bag for a curvy alabaster lamp in San Gimignano, Italy (which I happily rewired with an American plug), or when I scampered back to Kappabashi street in Tokyo before my flight because I truly needed one of the lanterns that hang outside restaurants (mine says “ramen”).

I love lamps so much that part of the allure of moving into a sprawling house is filling it with all the lamps I want to add to my collection. But in reality, I live in a one-bedroom apartment, so I have to be choosy about what lamps take up precious real estate in my home.

I was on the hunt for a little lamp to sit on my media console and balance out the comparatively harsh blue light from my TV when I stumbled across the humble IKEA Fado Table Lamp. I was transfixed. Its straightforward orb design, gentle glow, and just-right size instantly made the cut.

This minimalist lamp looks good almost anywhere and brings an ambient glow to any space.

As a frequent IKEA shopper, I’m usually pretty keyed in on popular, new, and seasonal items, but I will admit that this lamp—which has been a mainstay in IKEA’s lineup of tabletop lighting since its release in 2005—wasn’t on my radar until a few years ago.

While the Fado might be one you pass over for the internet-famous Varmblixt LED Table/Wall Lamp or more sculptural Simrishamn Table Lamp, its simple design is what makes it so versatile. A 10-inch glass globe sits atop a footed base that holds a light bulb of your choosing, and it has a 6-foot cord with a small switch to turn it on and off. Its milky glass globe diffuses light, creating an ethereal effect.

It doesn’t have any special bells and whistles, but that’s par for the course with Scandi design. And that simplicity has its advantages: Smooth glass shades are particularly easy to wipe down, and it doesn’t have indentations or crenulations that can make cleaning a chore. The Fado lamp is totally unfussy, and it adds a very distinct mid-century modern vibe to any room it’s in.

With a 10-inch diameter, its Goldilocks size means it can fit nearly anywhere. I keep mine on my TV console (as I intended), but it looks just as distinguished as a kitchen lamp (where any cooking grease can be quickly wiped away), atop a side table in a living room, or nestled between books on a shelf in an office.

Senior staff writer Joshua Lyon, who covers home design at Wirecutter, has long admired his friend’s smoky gray Fado lamp, which he says “looks beautiful placed on the floor against a wall.” While this color has been discontinued, you may have luck finding it on secondhand market sites like Etsy or eBay, since there’s always a resale appetite for archival IKEA pieces. Plus, IKEA could always bring it back for a limited (or even permanent) run, like they did with the Nytillverkad collection of vintage designs.

Joshua even considered the Fado lamp when writing his guide to the best bedside lamps, as he’s a fellow fan of the Swedish lamp. In the end, he says, “We decided that those picks should be able to direct the light beam away from a bed partner in some way, and you can’t do that with a Fado.” If you don’t share a bed or aren’t bothered by this caveat, it’s certainly a vibey addition to a nightstand.

For a bit of an upgrade, I keep a smart bulb in my Fado, which lets me adjust color temperature and brightness without a manual dimmer (which the lamp lacks) as well as control it all with my voice since it’s connected to my Alexa. I was once a smart-home skeptic, but switching to smart bulbs in all my lighting has greatly improved my day-to-day.

Since my Fado sits next to my TV, being able to adjust the brightness from my couch is immensely helpful for setting the ideal movie ambiance. And the transition from day to night is much less dreary when I can chirp at Alexa to turn on my various lamps; it particularly eases the 4 p.m. dread in winter.

If I were to change anything about the Fado lamp, it would be to upgrade the base material from polypropylene to something more substantial, like chrome or molded glass. It’s a bit finicky to get the base to clip onto the glass globe when you need to change the light bulb, too, but for about $30, these minor gripes are an easy trade-off.

Hopefully one day, I’ll level up to a house with more rooms than my city apartment, and I can fill it with every oddball lamp I come across. For now, though, the Fado has earned its spot in my small home, and you can bet it’s getting wrapped up and loaded on the moving truck when I eventually do score some more square footage.

This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Megan Beauchamp.

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Caroline Mullen

Caroline Mullen is a staff writer reporting on cleaning and organizing at Wirecutter. Though she’s waging a constant battle against the dog hair and dust bunnies in her apartment, she’s not willing to scale back on tchotchkes to make it easier. It also takes her two to three business days to complete a load of laundry—but she’s made peace with that.

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