Bedside lights are nothing new, they sit there providing a soft, room filing, glow. Over the years there have been lots of different designs for lamps, but I recently got my hands on one that has a neat trick, it floats!
The levitation moon lamp is available from a range of suppliers, the one I’m checking out is from Encalife.
Floating 3D Moon
A show stopping lamp like nothing I’ve seen before. The moon literally floats above its beautiful base and can be set to spin, showing off the detailed surface.
Pros
- 3 colour modes
- Small footprint
- Looks amazing
- Realistic 3D moon
Cons
- Have to set up everytime
The moon has a diameter of 5.7 inches and a textured surface, giving it a very realistic look.
The wooden base looks very stylish, it looks like a slab of wood, but inside it holds all the magical components to make the moon float. It has a subtle touch sensor that let’s you switch between three colour modes.
How do you use a floating moon lamp?
This fascinating lamp takes a moment to set up, you don’t just turn it on/off, in fact the only power button there is controls the lamp colour.
To use a floating moon lamp you must suspend the moon within a magnetic field on top of the base. Hold the moon in your hands and rest them on the base to prevent it from moving. You’ll feel the moon being push away from the base, when you’ve positioned the moon over the centre of the base it will light up, and you can release it.
This can be a tricky process. Sometimes I nail it the first time, other times I’ve forgotten to hold down the base, and it starts to move around, reacting to the moons magnet.
The light inside the moon is a great guide that you’re getting warmer, the closer it is to the correct position the more the light will stay on. If it’s flickering, you’re close but not in the right position.
Once in place, the moon will hover above the base, put a slight spin on it, and it rotates around while levitating.
The tricky part is getting it to rotate round without being off balance. Even if it wobbles a little it will eventually settle down into a smooth rotation.
This rotation lasts a long time; there is no friction to slow the spin down; it just keeps going for a lot longer than you’d expect.
How does the levitating moon work?
The lamp is a very cool concept and looks fantastic once you have it lit up and floating above the base, but how does it work?
The Moon Lamp is a floating LED light bulb that uses magnets to levitate above the base. The base is plugged into a power outlet, it uses power to create the magnetic force and to power the lights inside the moon.
Think back to science class when you had two magnets: putting the different ends together caused the magnets to either be attracted to each other or repelled.
Once correctly position, the moon will sit floating above the base with nothing underneath it. It’s a very impressive feature!
The other smart aspect is the way the moon lights up without being physically connected to anything. This is achieved by electromagnetic induction technology, which is commonly used in cooking appliances such hobs.
It’s a neat use of the technology and means you never need to worry about changing batteries in the moon; the power for the LED lights is automatically delivered from the base once the moon is correctly positioned.
In case you’re wondering, here is how you get the levitating moon lamp to float.
Is it a good lamp?
The floating aspect is great, but also a bit of a novelty. Fortunately once it’s turned on and emitting light it’s a great bedside lamp.
It emits a soft glow and there are 3 different colour options to choose from. You swap between these options via a touch control on the base. It’s very subtle looking; unless you shine a light directly at it, you may not even realise where it is!
There are no other controls; you can’t set the brightness or set an automatic off time. Automatic off wouldn’t make sense on this product, it would mean the moon would fall down, if you were asleep this would very likely wake you up.
It will automatically power off if it detects the base is getting too warm, something I assume might happen if you leave it on for extended periods of time.
Final Thoughts
I’ve never seen anything like the levitating moon lamp before, it looks really simple but has an immediate “WOW!” factor.
There is a bit more setup involved compared to a regular lamp: you can’t just turn it on, you’ve got to correct position the moon every time you want to use it.
However, for those who want to create an amazing space inspired lighting setup I think this would pair nicely with a projector, have the stars or nebular on the ceiling, the moon on a table.
There seem to be a lot of different models available, the one featured in the video is from Encalife, but you can also find them on Amazon.
