Intimate Lighting

The key to bedroom lighting is “flexibility,” says designer Peri Shefik. “That fixture over the bed is good to clean by,” but “you want several options so you can have intimate lighting or light to read by, not one bright source.”

Shefik, 46, has been designing and manufacturing lamps for eight years out of her downtown loft. Her handmade creations sell at chic interiors stores such as Blueprint in West Hollywood and City Design in Los Angeles, and they enjoy something of a cult following that owes much to the designer’s choice of materials: honey-colored paper-thin birch plywood, delicate rice paper, sexy red Dupioni silk. “Having softer, warmer material in the bedroom fits,” says Shefik, who designed “Flashdance”-style Lycra bodywear before turning to lighting.

Painter Lisa Palmer and her architect husband, who are currently between homes, had three Peri lamps in their last bedroom. “They have a very intimate light to them,” says Palmer, in addition to being “functional pieces of art.”

Of the 20 or so designs in Shefik’s line, which range from $200 to $500, her favorites for the bedroom include the rectangular-shaded “Joshua” lamp, whose complementary rectangular base is weighted by river rocks reminiscent of a Zen garden, and the spare, playfully modernist “Jake,” whose diminutive profile and spare lines Shefik favors over those “oversized, ceramic bulbous things from the ‘50s.” “Lower lighting makes it intimate, subdued, like when people have candles on low tables,” she says. “You’re relaxing in there. You’re not balancing your checkbook.”