Did we just find a ￡25 dupe for an iconic designer lamp? We think we did
It’s needless to say that we’re pretty lamp-obsessed at the minute in the Ideal Home office. But can you blame us with all these lovely table lamps on the market and new ones coming out pretty much daily? And yet, another one has come to our attention, that’s also a dupe for a designer classic on top of that. It’s the John Lewis Tony desk lamp.
Not only that it might be one of the best desk lamps in its own right, the Tony lamp is the perfect dupe for the iconic Anglepoise Type 75 desk lamp that’s also sold through John Lewis. But while the former sells for perfectly acceptable ￡25, the latter goes for ￡219 a pop. Or ￡189 for the Mini version, which in all fairness is closer in size to the Tony lamp.
Tony Desk Lamp
The steel desk lamp is designed to a sleek and petite silhouette fitted with an adjustable head. It comes in a wide range of colours with different finishes, which we love.
Anglepoise Type 75 Desk Lamp
The result of decades of desk lamp design has lead to the Type 75 best-selling style by Anglepoise. It's so iconic that it's been the subject of several designer collaborations. The ergonomic functionality that makes it endlessly adjustable is what this one has on its budget-friendly dupe.
Our current lamp-happy attitude has already succumbed to the likes of the Dunelm Keko wireless lamp and the M&S Kirsten table lamp. And now we find ourselves falling victim to the Tony lamp. Part of the department store’s budget-friendly ANYDAY range, the steel task lamp is the ideal addition to any home office with its adjustable head and petite, space-saving design, ideal for small home office ideas.
The Pixar-worthy, best-selling Type 75 task lamp by Anglepoise is the result of 80 years refining what a task lamp should be and look like, with a design inspired by vintage desk lamp styles. And it has a couple of things on its dupe.
One is its size. The Type 25 is larger, towering over the 36cm-high Tony lamp at 53cm. But that might be a downside for you if you’re struggling for space. The other thing is its ergonomic functionality taken to the extreme. While the Tony lamp features an adjustable head, the Type 75 comes with adjustable everything.
Ideal Home’s Digital Deputy Editor, Rebecca Knight, has already bagged the wireless Amazon table lamp this season. Now, she’s eyeing up the mustard colourway of the Tony lamp that she was the first one to spot. ‘I think that a good desk lamp is a must and this one ticks all the boxes. What caught my eye about this design first and foremost was the cheerful mustard colour that it comes in. And its entire colour range might even be better than the original Anglepoise desk lamp that it’s a dupe for.’
Indeed, the cheerful colourways in various finishes (gloss, matte, metallic, you name it) like the aforementioned mustard, as well as lichen and sleek metallic gold tone and copper of the Tony lamp contrast the industrial colours of the Type 75 such as black, white and silver.
So which one takes the cake in the battle of the ideal task lamps?