What should a children's desk lamp have

From a light-up-the-whole-room ceiling lamp to a midnight-potty-break night light, our children’s lighting doesn’t just make little ones feel safer, it keeps them safer too. It’s all thanks to rigorous tests and careful designs. Find a baby night light or daytime reading light for your little one.

Though not exceedingly bright, the lamp’s integrated, 40-watt-equivalent LEDs give off a pleasantly diffuse, warm light that won’t tire eyes while you’re working from a computer or reading printed material. Turning the lamp on and off is simple because it has a single tactile button, located on the top of the lamp shade. Assembly requires just a tad more effort; both the lamp shade and the base slide into each side of the arms with a secure click, and two springs need to be stretched and attached for proper tension.

You shouldn't wait until your eyes age to get proper task lighting; it's really important at any age and will save you eye strain and headaches. I have put together a chart with basic wattage recommendations based on age, type/amount of use, and type of light bulb (see below).

The measurement unit related to light that most of us are familiar with is probably the watt. Wattage, however, indicates how much energy is consumed rather than how much light is provided. Such as an eye-protection lamp.

The general principles of light affecting melatonin production and sleep apply to both children and adults. However, children may be even more sensitive to light. As we age, structures in our eyes gradually become less sensitive to light. Children also have larger pupils than adults. A research study found that evening light exposure suppressed melatonin twice as much in children compared to adults. A child’s age and developmental stage may also determine the impact. Researchers found that children who had not yet gone through puberty experienced significantly more melatonin suppression in response to evening light compared with post-puberty adolescents.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Fully extended, the arms reach to only 20½ inches in height. Combined with the small, 3½-inch lampshade, the area of light cast by this desk lamp is limited in comparison with light cast by our other picks. This makes the 90 Mini Mini best suited for use with a laptop, for reading, or for other tasks that don’t require a large area of illumination and that can be supplemented by a secondary light source. You can dim the lamp by holding down the power button, but execution is a bit clunky compared with the rest of the lamp’s straightforward simplicity. The 90 Mini Mini connects to power at the base via a Micro-USB power cord (a connection with a tendency to loosen and fail over time compared with more-robust USB-A or USB-C connections).

1. A typical computer screen produces about 20-25 footcandles (FC) of measured light. To avoid headaches from your eyes dilating back and forth when you switch from looking at your computer to your desk, you want at least a 3 to 1 contrast ratio of light (20-25 FC from your screen, 50-75 on your desk).

Sun lamps positively impact your body’s regulation of melatonin, a hormone that helps control your sleep-wake cycle, as well as serotonin, which helps regulate your mood by relaying signals in your brain. One study reports that bright-light therapy is now considered to be the first line of treatment for SAD.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Although this lamp can reach far forward, its two-piece arm cannot tilt backward beyond a subtle angled position. The automatic energy-saving on/off sensor failed us only once, when we were in a still, long reading mode and had the lamp blocked with other items. But once we positioned the Nova normally, that never occurred again. We’ll keep an eye on this feature.