If you find yourself squinting to read your sheet music, you may want to look into buying a piano light. A piano light is just what it sounds like – it’s a light that’s designed for your piano. And while other lights and lamps are designed to spread light to the rest of the room, a piano lamp is designed to spread light directly onto your sheet music, and nowhere else.
But is that really an advantage? Shouldn’t you be looking for the most light you can get out of a lamp? Not necessarily. A piano light still spreads just as much light as a normal lamp, but with one exception: it spreads that light onto a very small, exact area – your sheet music. That means that the light is brighter and more concentrated; it also means it doesn’t blind you when you need to look at your sheet music, because the light doesn’t come toward you.
The entire purpose of a piano lamp is to focus the light onto your sheet music, so you shouldn’t expect a piano light to light up your entire room. All you really need to see is your sheet music and the keyboard while you’re playing, anyway – so that’s what a piano light is designed to illuminate. And the great advantage of having a light that’s designed specifically for your piano is that you aren’t going to “miss” like you might with other lamps. By improving the lighting in your room, you can certainly improve the visibility of your sheet music. But if you happen to have a floor lamp that’s at an odd angle, or blocked from that section of the piano, you still don’t improve the visibility of your music. A piano lamp is designed to target specifically your sheet music, so you know you’ll be able to see it.
What should you look for when you’re looking into buying a light for your piano? A good piano lamp will be sturdy, but still small. You don’t want to buy a lamp that you can’t actually fit on your piano. A lamp that’s designed specifically for a piano will usually be a desk-lamp variety, although there are lamps (designed for grand pianos, usually) that stand on the floor. A piano light will usually be long and narrow, so it can light up the whole music stand evenly, and it will be flexible, so you can adjust exactly where you want it. You should also make sure your lamp has a cover over at least half the bulb, so you don’t have a light shining into your eyes while you’re playing.
[...] difficult to look at, because it spreads just as much light into your eyes as onto the music. A piano light will point the light directly at the sheet music, and avoid shining light into your face, so you [...]