The smaller a house is the more uses must be accommodated within each room. In our case or Sabines Home, our formal living is also being used as music and as a reading space. The challenge: Find a freestanding light for a living room that looks good AND provides…
- Great reading light for multiple seats without lighting up the room like a stadium
- Has good quality lighting
- Fits into the more elegant living room space
After an extensive search we found “SwingAding”, a light fixture created by the German lighting designer, Ingo Maurer.
SwingAding is a low-voltage fixture that actually has two lights: a 12 volt reading light at the top where the exact light beam can further be “dialed in” via a cylindrical shroud and a small ambient light with top shade at the bottom. Swingading does exactly what the name implies: It swings via its flexible center. You read correctly: Flexible center!
Depending on where one positions an attached steel weight the fixture bends. This allows one to position the reading light exactly where it is needed within a full 360 circumference. Fantastic! But that’s not all. When a more social lighting scheme is needed Swingading’s small ambient light at the bottom is just what’s needed.
Two more neat features: One, touch a certain switch point and either one or both lights turn on. Two, as with all low-voltage fixtures a transformer is needed. Swingading has the transformer out of sight and tucked away in its base. This fixture is simple great fun, perfect for reading and always a conversation piece with new guests.
One unfortunate side to this fixture: the manufacturer’s packaging – surprising from a German manufacturer. It took us three different shipments to finally wind up with an undamaged fixture. Light fixtures are by nature a light delicate so why Swingading gets shipped so poorly remains a mystery. We almost gave up on it but are happy to have prevailed after weeks of aggravating back and forth shipping.
