Do You Want a Boring Floor Lamp or an Ugly Floor Lamp?

Buying a floor lamp should be pretty easy. You don’t have to try one on for size. You don’t have to sit on it to make sure it’s comfortable. You don’t have to worry that, once in your home, it will behave in ways substantially different from what you expected. It’s a floor lamp. As long as you have a tape measure and the ability to look at photos on your phone, you should be good to go. Target alone has more than 1,300 options available on its website, starting at $10. Pick one.

And yet I have been shopping for a floor lamp for, conservatively, five years. The process, which repeats itself a couple of times a year, always starts the same way: It’s too dim to read a book after dinner on my end of the couch. I get frustrated but dispense with the idea of a table lamp—no outlet, too little end-table