This winter, brighten up your evenings with the best portable lights and rechargeable lamps. Designed by some of today's most brilliant creative minds in collaboration with leading lighting brands, these indoor and outdoor portable lamps are the perfect adaptable companions for your everyday needs, perfect to add a bit of comfort to your home, and able to swing between home and (home) office with impeccable ease.
Browse our shoppable edit of portable lamps that double as the perfect design gift.
THE PORTABLE LIGHTS TO BUY THIS WINTER
'Salt is mobile wellbeing, wherever you are,' say its makers, Timon and Melchior Grau. A classic hourglass form conceals the advanced cable-free technology in these compact portable lights by the German lighting design specialist. Fully portable with no compromise on intensity, the ‘Salt’ lamp presents a literal beacon of light, comfort, and kinship. A development of Grau's popular 'Salt&Pepper', the new portable lamp is designed with wellbeing in mind, with a warm sunset-like light conceived to boost melatonin for better sleep.
Tom Dixon's 'The Portables' series includes Melt, Stone and Bell lamps that offer a new practical yet still expressive interpretation of the British designer's distinctive lighting offering. 'Increasingly we want our light to move with us,' says Dixon. 'Thankfully the magic of technology has come to the rescue with powerful batteries and low energy light sources combined to allow us to illuminate wherever we choose with complete adaptability.'
The playful proportions of Catellani & Smith's Ale portable lamp are enriched by the fluorescent colour scheme of its latest launch. The design features a semi-cylinder attached to a v-shaped structure, with a small fly-shaped object concealing the connecting screw. The lamp is part of the brand's wider Ale collection, featuring an interpretation of the design as large table lamp, a sconce and a ceiling lamp.
Verner Panton's Panthella lamp has been declined in several interpretations by lighting design brand Louis Poulsen. The Danish brand's offering of the 1971 design includes a portable lamp, available in a series of delicious shades that nod to the chromatic enthusiasm of the 1970s. The lamp emits a suffused non-glaring light, while its domed metal shade provides practical downward illumination.
The Turn portable lamp by Nao Tamura is inspired by the familiarity of a lantern and features four settings that range from candle-like intensity to practical illumination for hosting and reading.This portable light promises over 500 hours of light between charges and is waterproof for outdoor use.
Vincent Van Duysen's portable lighting debut is a compact rechargeable lamp inspired by Adolf Loos and whose name pays tribute to Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. The essential forms of the lamp conceal rechargeable batteries and an intuitive touch -activated on-off mechanism, and its technology makes it waterproof suitable for both indoor and outdoor use. Available in seven finishes and two light temperatures (2700K and 3000K), the lamp is suitable for indoor and outdoor illumination.
Suitable for indoor or outdoor use, the Hay PC portable lamp by Pierre Charpin is updated with a colorful palette and up to ten hours of light per charge. Featuring a composition of shapes characteristic of Charpin’s work, and a chromatic arrangement referencing Memphis colours, the battery-powered light’s injection-moulded plastic body is completed with a matte finish that is both scratch- and water-resistant.
French designer Samy Rio's Quasar is a tribute to the brightest star in the galaxy. Strong and durable, the rechargeable lamp features a body in anodized aluminium, available in emerald or olive green, black, sienna and grey, equipped with a nylon rope (extending up to 5 meters) to enhance its portability. The light comes in three hues (warm, neutral, and cold white), and the battery lasts up to 12 hours between charges.
Canadian designer Tom Chung was inspired by flashlights and outdoor gear to create the Piton portable lamp for Muuto. The lamp’s industrial aesthetic is informed by its functionality: this ultra-light aluminium portable lamp sits, rests, clips or hooks, and it is imagined to adapt to older buildings or off-grid scenarios. ‘I wanted it to be a contemporary interpretation of a torch lamp, that could act as the only lamp you might need in any context,’ continues the designer. ‘The lamp aims to influence you to find nature in the city or find comfort in nature.’
Legendary Memphis designer George Sowden has been creating captivating products under his eponymous label. The latest in a series of silicone-shade lamp designs is this collection of portable lamp in bold colours and simple forms. The specially-developed Sowden LED lightbulb is controlled by a light touch, while the battery can be removed and swapped with a fully-charged replacement, to avoid waiting for a full charge between uses.
In 1972, American designer Bill Curry conceived the Obello lamp as the first single module lamp, crafted from a single piece of glass in a stylised mushroom shape. To design the lamp, Curry was inspired by the atomic age, space race, and pop culture from 1970s LA. Five decades after its conception, Gubi puts the lamp into production for the first time. Made of frosted, mouth-blown glass (the same that was used for Curry’s original lamp designs), the Obello lamp now becomes a portable light, offering over 40 hours of glow with each full charge.
For his lighting debut with Kartell, Philippe Starck was inspired by the romantic glow of a candle to create a smart portable light that is minimal as it is high tech. ‘The light of a candle is the most beautiful, natural and almost the first light of our civilization,’ says Starck. ‘But sadly modernity does not like candles. With Goodnight, [we] reinvent this iconic pure light to warm our dreams.’
The ultimate combination of light and gastronomy, chef Davide Oldani’s ‘Bontà’ light conceived for Artemide is intended as a tool for conviviality. The rechargeable light bottom is topped with bowls of different shapes and sizes, to combine serving food with illuminating the table. ‘Bontà is not a decorative element,’ says Oldani. ‘It creates an atmosphere, it supports and enhances food, it is open to welcome different shapes of containers.’
Portable in name and spirit, these classic rechargeable lamps by Inma Bemúdez for Marset comes back in a new palette of pastel hues. This small lantern’s playful spirit makes it a perfect indoor or outdoor lamp, adding a touch of after-dark whimsy and serenity.