Canvas Shade Floor Lamp – Espresso or Cream, Living Room & Bedroom

A floor lamp with a canvas shade, in Espresso or Cream. Canvas is a heavier and more tightly woven cloth than the linen or cotton usually used for lampshades, and the weight shows: the shade holds its own shape with little internal framing, and its surface is flat and matte rather than slubbed or semi-translucent. The two colorways are near opposites — a dark brown that absorbs, a pale cream that transmits.

That difference is not cosmetic. Espresso canvas is dense and dark enough that very little light passes through the sides, so almost all of it leaves through the top and bottom of the shade as two defined pools. Cream canvas lets light through the weave as well, so the shade itself glows and the light spreads much more widely. The same lamp lights a room in two quite different ways depending on which one is chosen.

In a living room, Cream gives usable general light across a seating area while Espresso gives a reading pool and leaves the rest of the room dim. In a bedroom the same logic runs the other way, and Espresso is often the more useful of the two.

• Shade: Canvas
• Colorways: Espresso, Cream
• Form: Floor lamp