Gadget review: Plumen designer lightbulb

By Josh Welensky
Published on 30/07/2012 00:00

THERE’S no getting away from it. Energy-saving lightbulbs are ugly. The marriage of form and function has been completely sidelined in order to maximise their energy delivery.

Plus, energy-saving lightbulbs have historically suffered from some rather glaring weaknesses, not just in the looks department, including warm-up times and brightness issues that have left their incandescent brothers laughing all the way to extinction. I can cook a simple pasta dish in the time it takes for my living room lightbulb to get up to full steam.

Plumen – derived from the “plume,” of a bird and “lumen,” the unit of light – address these shortcomings head on with their new energy-saving invention.

Pulling the Plumen out of its recycled cardboard packaging, I was first struck by its size. About the same height as a TV remote, this bulb is going to be sticking out of anything other than the longest of lamp shades.

Plumen’s simple disruption of the straightjacket form of its competitors has led to critical acclaim, including the title of Design of the Year and a permanent spot in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Although some wicked lampshade combos are possible (see the Plumen website), in my opinion the purity of Plumen’s form deserves to be expressed by flying solo.

If you’ve got the ceiling height, pair it with a pendant of red or yellow rope cord for a design statement worthy of the hippest of New York apartments.

And despite being rated at only 11W, using 80 per cent less energy and lasting eight times longer than 
regular bulbs, the Plumen fires up brighter than a solar flare.

Plumen Designer Lightbulb

£19.95, from plumen.com and www.johnlewis.com