furniture Archives

I never thought I would see the day I’d find myself excited by lightbulbs. The LED lighting revolution has come of age.

After recently replacing every remaining incandescent bulb in my house with LED bulbs that perfectly mimic their respective incandescent counterparts, I decided it was time to get rid of a potentially dangerous halogen-powered torchiere floor lamp, and replace it with an LED-capable version of the up-firing ceiling bounce light of the same floor lamp style. After looking at torchiere style lamps for sale in local stores and not being happy with how top-heavy they were, I ended up ordering a Brightech – SKY LED Torchiere Floor Lamp from Amazon.

The lamp is extremely easy to assemble by simply screwing the parts together and plugging a couple of wires together. The heaviest part of the lamp assembly is the base that sits on the floor, which does a great job of stabilizing the lamp even on thick carpeting. The LED light array on the up-firing top disc produces a claimed 3,000 lumens on the brightest setting, one of four light levels. The light is controlled by tapping a touch surface about two-thirds the way up from the floor in about the same place that the old rotary on/off switch was on the old halogen floor lamp it replaced.

The lamp sells on Amazon for $89.50. I don’t know why local stores don’t have lamps like these. I do think they would sell them if they bothered to have them in stock. I wish that brick and mortar stores could somehow grasp that there are some really excellent, innovative products that people want. Unfortunately for the brick and mortars these products seem to be available online only. I don’t expect local stores to stock everything, but it seems to me they could become a bit more savvy about stocking products that forces shoppers to go online.

The touch surface is properly positioned and performs well when repeatedly touched, cycling through the various brightness levels as well as off. The transformer that plugs into the wall outlet gets slightly warm to the touch, coming in at 83 degrees Fahrenheit with an infrared thermometer in a 72 degree room. The top of the lamp generates a bit more heat, coming in at 96 degrees Fahrenheit.

My little girl loves playing outside but I’ve noticed over the years that many of her outdoor toys become damaged and discoloured from the elements of sun, wind and rain. While small toys can be put away in the shed, larger items have to stay outside to be battered about. Kev and the Folding Playhouse may have the solution for at least one garden toy and he tells me more about the development of the product from idea to the current concept model and plans for the future.

The Folding Playhouse is what it says. It’s an outdoor plastic playhouse that folds down, either for storage or for conversion into an arts and craft table. It folds in around 15 seconds and can be reassembled just as quickly. Once completely folded, the Playhouse is not only easier to store in the garage or shed, it can be taken in the back of a large family car for fun at friends’ and relatives’ houses.

The picture above shows a 3D printed miniature version of the Folding Playhouse. The final version will be in bright colours, about 1.5 m high, 1.4 m wide, 1.3 m deep, with the potential to customise with stickers or decals. With all new products, feedback is vital and there’s been plenty of that at Gadget Show Live as part of the British Inventors’ Project.

Kev and his team have been in contact with toy companies worldwide to bring the Playhouse market and the expectation is that this would sell for under GB£200. There’s more information on the Folding Playhouse website, which has some interesting market stats – did you know that 30 million outdoor toys were sold in the UK in 2014 generating nearly £350 million in sales?

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Category Archives: furniture

Brightech – SKY LED Torchiere Floor Lamp

Folding Playhouse at Gadget Show Live