A good pair of lights by your bed can really lift the look of your room. Spend time choosing just the right wall lights for your bedroom can make or break the look of your room.

If you have the wall space behind your bed. You’ll give yourself better headroom if you position lights to the side rather than over your pillows. Over-pillow lights would need to be higher up the wall, which, depending on the fitting. Could result in less intimate and less directed lighting.

If you don’t have the space or don’t fancy swing-arm lights, you can also find teeny tiny positionable lamps too.

In a small bedroom, the wall lights you choose will have a direct relationship with the main light. You flick on as you enter the room. In fact, opting to have your wall lights connected to that main switch by the door will often be a sensible option, space-wise.

Traditional sconces or swing-arms

Traditional sconces or swing-arms aren’t the only types of wall light suitable for bedside illumination. Consider a dainty pendant that has been transformed into a wall light. This is thanks to a very simple idea – that is, fixing an attractive shelf bracket to your wall and drilling a hole into the tip. So that the cable can be threaded through to suspend the pendant in just the right position.

You could even simply wind the cable artfully or knot it. Especially if you have a lamp with an inline switch and a plug on the end and want to do a quick DIY job.

Another lesson to take is to choose your switches as carefully as your light fittings. Do you want to blend them in or make them as much of a feature as the lights? And if the latter, do they work aesthetically with said lights?

The obvious position for bed wall lights, perhaps, is the wall behind the bedhead. But if you have built-in wardrobes that are close to your bed. Then make use of them for tucking lights out of the way.

If you are sharing your bed with someone, ensure you’ll both be happy with this kind of light. Which may provide a bigger glow and keep your sleeping pal awake if you like to read late into the night. Dimmers and low-wattage bulbs are one solution, but eye strain will have to be a consideration.