My husband and I have quite differing tastes, so when it comes to interior decorating we often clash! We both have very clear ideas about what we like, and there's very little overlap. The few things we do tend to agree on are things with a rustic or ethnic feel to them, and that's where this lamp came in. I had spent about two hours looking through the Debenhams website making a huge shortlist of things to put on our wedding list and when he turned up, the only thing he agreed with me on was this lamp. After I'd calmed down and resisted throwing my laptop at him, I put it on the list and to our delight, a friend of mine bought it for us.

The lamp comes in two sizes, and we picked the smaller one. The smaller is £32 and the larger £45, but you should definitely keep an eye out for the regular Debenhams sales, because at the moment (March 2012) they're £25.60 and £36. We thought the larger one was a bit too expensive to ask someone to buy for us, and to be honest when we saw it in the store we were glad because it was a bit too big for our room. The large one would be a lot more of a feature, while our small one is just a nice touch. We like the lamp, but I don't think we'd want it as a major focus point.

The colour is slightly off white, just verging on cream, and would go with most other colours. It's the design that restricts where you could put it. I don't think this would go very well in an up to the minute, minimalistic modern room, or something that was styled to a really specific theme like florals, or neon, or hunting lodge. However we have a quite eclectic feel to our décor (as much out of necessity as choice, as we're renting so we pretty much get what we're given) and this fits in really nicely. We have a lot of ethnic printed photo frames, big pillar candles and rustic flowerpots, and this is a lovely touch. I think it would go in most living rooms that aren't overly styled. It's not too pretty and delicate, which wouldn't suit my tastes, but the carving type design gives it some detail that's really nice to look at.

The light the lamp gives is good. The carving disperses the light well so it's not harsh, it's very soft. It's enough to read by if you're sat right next to it, but generally we just use it as a bit of light when we're watching TV in the evening or just chatting. It's not enough to light a large room by itself.

So I've been calling the design a 'carving' but only because I don't know what else to call it! Carving suggests the lamp is made out of wood but in fact it's a painted ceramic. It's very sturdy and the paint shows no sign of flaking or rubbing away or scratching. Whilst this looks quite delicate you don't need to be terribly careful with it as it's survived a couple of drops onto carpet. If you have hard floors though it's obviously advisable to make sure the lamp is on a secure surface.

The cable is about a metre long so you do need to make sure there's a plug socket or an extension where you want to put it. This is probably quite standard to most small lamps. The bulb is just a standard screw in one that can be easily replaced - access to the socket is easy as you just reach down inside the hole at the top which is easily large enough to fit an arm into.

You can probably see from the picture whether you think the style would be your cup of tea or not, and if you like it then I'd definitely recommend getting it. It's really great quality, and will last years, I think. I've had it for almost a year now and we've had absolutely no problems or issues. It's well made and gives a brilliant light. I'm giving this five stars because I really can't fault it.