The 6 Best Floor Lamps

We’ve tested dozens of lamps over the years. Here’s what we think about a few of the styles that are still widely available.

The budget-friendly Aaron Aged Brass 3-Light Floor Lamp is stable. However, its modest, 40-watt-output per lampshade ranks it at the lower end of all the lamps we tested. Plus, its mid-century–adjacent design looks and feels a little cheap.

The ADS360 Crane LED Floor Lamp is a task lamp that has a hard time filling the room with light. But it’s compact and easily adjustable, with a four-way LED touch dimmer that emits a pleasant light for reading.

We liked the solid metal construction, tip resistance, and ever-so-goth style of the Article Black Treo Metal Fabric Floor Lamp. You’ll need a large room, though, to keep its wide-legged stance, large-diameter shade, and all-black presence from dominating the space. Plus, it’s hard to move and is rated for only a modest 40-watt maximum output.

With the Brightech Emma LED Tripod Floor Lamp, you’ll have one less thing to purchase. It comes with its own 60-watt equivalent LED bulb and ships in an ingenious flat-pack design. But its wooden legs are so lightweight that the lamp teetered and moved across the floor when it was lightly bumped by a basketball.

The Brightech Jacob Floor Lamp is nearly identical to the aforementioned Aaron lamp. The Jacob differentiates itself with the inclusion of a full three-year warranty and three budget LED bulbs in the box—for $5 more.

The CB2 Big Dipper Arc Brushed-Nickel Floor Lamp’s insufficiently sized metal base doesn’t instill a great deal of confidence. Still, if you prefer an arc lamp topped with a shade rather than a dome, the Big Dipper is tall and bright (up to 150 watts), and it has a high tensile-arcing arm that doesn’t sway as dramatically as those of similar lamps we tried.

With its tightly pleated shade in rich colors, the Hay Matin floor lamp is certainly striking, but its steel frame felt flimsy and unstable. We liked the tabletop version, though, and we made it a pick in our bedside lamp guide—in the lamp’s smaller size, the base is easily stabilized with a small pile of books.

The Lepower Wood Tripod Floor Lamp was a previous pick, yet in a recent round of testing we noticed a significant decline in quality when we ordered a new version. The clips where the shade attaches broke easily, and the wooden legs looked sloppily stained and felt flimsy.

Our previous top pick, the Monique Tripod Floor Lamp (which has been renamed the Sarim), is easy to assemble, lightweight, and resistant to tipping over. It also has a smart cord-routing system, which hides the cord inside one of the legs to emerge from the bottom end. That said, its mosquito-thin legs—the narrowest legs of lamps we tested—look and feel flimsy. And we’ve continued to notice stock issues over the past year.

Noting the Norine 61″ Tripod Floor Lamp’s thousands of positive reviews online, we had high hopes for it. But our test unit was marred by a poorly threaded connector, which prevented us from securing a tight fit between each leg section and the three-way switch assembly; this resulted in a lamp that looked as though it had sprained its ankle and would topple over at the hint of a push.

The Orren Ellis Tregenna 59.5″ LED Floor Lamp is a supremely thin, nearly 60-inch-tall rod light that practically disappears from view when turned off. The lamp is marred only by an ungainly and cheap-quality dimmer box, which is a pain to adjust and looks particularly mismatched alongside the lamp’s otherwise-sleek modern-chrome design.

The SH Lighting 31171F-SG Adjustable Tripod Floor Lamp has an adjustable height and a sleek, metal pull-string control. And the power cord is directed through its center tubing, for a cleaner in-room presence. During testing, a nudge is what did it in. With its oversize drum and the low position of its three legs, this unsteady floor lamp could be tipped over by a child, a pet, or a happily inebriated party guest.

This article was edited by Joanne Chen and Daniela Gorny.