Save Space with a Floor Lamp Table

What do you get when you combine a floor lamp with a side table? A very practical piece of furniture for decorating a small living space, that's what!

There are floor lamps, and there are occasional tables... and then there's a hard-to-name piece of furniture that's somewhere in between:

• An end table with an attached light fixture?
• A floor lamp with a built-in tray or table?

Featured: Oak End Table with Swing Arm Lamp

I love the idea of using one piece of floor for two purposes, making the most of your cubic inches in a small living space, and keeping down the clutter of things you'll need to vacuum around. These days, with more of us downsizing, choosing a two-in-one "floor lamp table" just makes good sense. But the idea itself is actually not all that new.

In fact, I first came across one of these clever combos in a rental cottage that had been decorated in the 1920s or 1930s, very retro, a traditional pine table with a simple articulated fixture very much like the one shown here. (The second one I saw was quite different, a concierge style all in modern chrome metal and translucent glass, in a compact urban apartment that had been professionally decorated as a show unit. The third was similar to one of the more formal Kathy Ireland designs, below. There's one for every taste!)

Simple traditional furniture styles like this bring together the floor lamp height lighting with a time-honored magazine table you may recall from your grandmother's living room or the summer cottage, as they were all the rage just after the war and hardly a home was without its reading chair and companion table. Maybe your magazine is more likely to be a tablet than a glossy, these days, but the practical move of setting a task light and a small table by your favorite chair remains a smart idea in furnishing and decorating for a home that's meant to be actively lived in.

In a completely different mood, but equally practical, here's another table-lamp-table I'm quite excited about. When you want to divide your room into different zones for different activities, a combination of lamp and end table shelves is a smart solution. On one side, your dining area and on the other your lounge or reading nook, perhaps?

I'm just a bit enchanted with the floor lamp tray table I saw - much like the arrangement pictured here - in the room of an elderly lady friend.

Her condo in an assisted-living seniors' residence is lovely, but it is not large. The floor lamp tray table by her favorite armchair gives her good light for reading and a convenient surface to hold her tea cup, TV remote, and other items close at her elbow when she needs them.

The articulated swing arm on the light is particularly useful if you've got a limited number of options for where you can place a lamp, either because of a limited amount of available floor space in which to put it or because of too few electrical outlets, or (in my home) outlets that are never quite where you really need them to be. The double elbows let you rotate and position the lighting in exactly the right position.

The well-named concierge style or tray floor lamp is perfect for a strategic corner, where the built-in tiny table is ready to receive your guest's empty glass - or try it in the foyer, to add welcome light and collect your mail and keys.

Can't you just see one of these unique floor lamps tucked into in a cosy reading corner in an urban loft? So minimalist in its lines, with a nod back in time to heritage craftsman. At the moment, I think these styles are my favorite lamp-tables of all.