Tall Halogen Torchiere

I was looking specifically for theses lamps. Had one a years ago that worked so well. So glad I got 2 new ones. i reaally dont understand what everone else is complaining about? The trick is to buy a $9 300 watt bulb, put it in this, and bam, you have the ULTIMATE halogen light for your room. It is SOO brigh, and the lamp functions great. I do uderstand I guess what people are talking about with eventually the knob messing up, becuae the one I had before, it did break after years(!) what do you expect? but when it did, I went to home depot and got a plug in dimmer to put between the lamps cord and the wall outlet, problem solved. So far however these new lamps knobs are funtctioning beautifully and I am just so happy with the tons of clean light they put out. very happy

First the positives. It's got a heavy base, the metal pipes are solid, and overall, it looks pretty nice. If it was standing in a corner of someone's house, I'd probably think it was a nice lamp.

Sadly, it's standing in the corner of my house, and that means I know how much fiddling it took to get set up and working. Let's start with the packaging. Bring a vacuum cleaner, because the pieces are boxed with very flimsy, flaky styrofoam. The real problem with this isn't the mess, though. It's that all of the little pieces inside are tossed around in transit. This resulted in a broken bulb and glass cover in one of the two I bought, and I found the other bulb wedged into the side of the box on the other. Once everything is out, check all of the pieces, specifically screws. The lamp ships with many of the screws already in place, and they fall out easily. I found one on my porch after several minutes of fruitless sifting through styrofoam debris in my living room. And this brings us to the next issue, the bulb guards. Some nicer halogen lamps come with tempered glass plates to guard against anything falling into the bulb itself. This one comes with two poorly-assembled wire cages. The outermost is almost guaranteed to arrive bent out of shape (due to the flimsy, fine-gauge wires that were used), and though you can try, it probably will never end up looking like the nice dome that it was supposed to be.

After pushing together all of the pieces (the wire components don't actually have screw holes, they friction-fit onto the screws), the lamp *did* work, but I'm somewhat disappointed in the brightness. The bulb just isn't very powerful, and that's more or less the reason I went for a halogen lamp. Still, I am not afraid of it starting a fire; the electrical work is solid enough, and the guards (while somewhat ugly) are probably effective enough at avoiding a dust buildup or letting something fall into the bulb. I'll probably keep it (if only out of stubbornness from having spent too much money on it), but if you have the choice, I'd look elsewhere for a standing lamp. Read more ›

I was looking for a good bright halogen lamp like I had back in the 90's but was disappointed to find that secondary to a few incidents with home fires they don't sell them with the high wattage anymore. I thought this was a shame since the purpose of this product is high output indirect lighting. I believe these high wattage lamps can be used safely as long as they are placed in a proper location (they should be NOWHERE NEAR curtains or any potentially flammable objects, or in any location where they might be knocked over)

I did some research and settled on this product. First of all, it is not quite 6 feet tall I would put it at maybe 5'9" or so. I am 6 feet tall and I dont see the bulb when standing up so this is fine for me. The quality is so-so. Pretty much run of the mill cheap halogen torchiere made from 1.5" pipe. The base is sturdy and the dimmer seems to be of good quality. They include a safety cage to put over the bulb which I threw out. If you put the bulb near curtains of something flammable this thing isn't gonna matter and it otherwise obstructs light and looks funny.

So the reason I wrote this review is that i disassembled the lamp and examined the dimmer, it is a 500w halogen dimmer. The bulb type is a standard 118mm j3 halogen. I picked up a 500w bulb from a local dollar store and now I have what I wanted, a 10,000 lumen lamp that lights up a large room beautifully. The wiring handles the current just fine, the dimmer warms up a little bit, presumable its normal operation. Just keep in mind this produces more heat than light and should be used in cold weather unless you want it to do battle with your air conditioner (I stick with a fluorescent unit in the summer).

These lamps are poorly manufactured. The components barely fit together, and, when finally assembled, not only was the lamp crooked, we were not able to install the provided halogen bulb. We had purchased two, but only opened one box. Both were returned to Amazon and we were promptly and fully reimbursed for our purchase.

My wife and have used Halogen Torchiere type lamps for more than 20 years. We like/need the amoount of light you can get from a 300 or 500 watt Halogen lamp and the lack of glare of indirect lighting (using light bounced off white celing.).This lamp comes with a lower light output bulb and we replaced with a 300/+ watt halogen lamp. I had no issues with the initial quality of this lamp or assembling it... or any damage in shipping. I also bought a 300 watt lamp through Amazon. These type of halogen lamps(bulbs) are also sold at hardware stores that sell "work lights" e.g., for workmen working at night. But, the halogen torch lamps are no longer readily available in stores like Target and K-Mart like they used to be. There is probably good reason for that because the heat given off these lamps is hot enough to start a fire if they tip over and/or are close enough to combustible material. This lamp has a spherical white wire mesh guard on the top which my older halogen torch lamps did not have. Still, be careful with these hot lamps. We turn them off when we leave the room. We had four young children at home (now grown out and moved out) when we first used this type of lamp and had no safety problems. But I am aware of a relative who started a fire with one of these lamps while in college... He left the room and it was too close to a drape.

But expect some problems overtime...
Eventually, there are things that go wrong with halogen lamps. The contacts where the lamps (bulbs) are inserted can arc and pit and affect the quality of the electrical contact. When they arc, you can hear a buzzing sound. Some times this can be fixed by cleaning the contacts (e.g., with emory cloth/sandpaper.) I've also had the dimming switches fail and relaced them with simple on/off switches. As the these lamps wore out, I would save the parts that were good in order to make replacement lamps bad combing the good parts of the lamp parts (e.g., make one workable lamp out of the parts of two other ones that had issues. My point is including this information is that I expect this lamp to perform as my older lamps did. But, I've had no problems thus far.

Until there is better high-output, more energy efficient option, this Halogen Torchiere type is the only choice for me... I have not been able to find a suitable (high-light-output, low-glare)replacement option in a regular store. The trend with lighting is to offer the same light output (of normal/tyipcal lamps) with lower electrical/energy cost. I've even thought of building a light box where I could put in 5-10 regular or more energy efficent lamps. (I would put it on top of our china cabinet and bounce the light off the ceiling.)

NOTE TO DESIGNERS: There is a market for a high-light-output, low-glare, energy efficient lamp suitable for using in a living room.

Bottom line... My wife and I are VERY HAPPY that we were able to find a suitable replacement for our old halogen torch lamps...price, shipping etc. fine, no/issues Don't you just love to have an Amazon option? Read more ›