PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
Verner Panton drew the Panthella in 1971 and wanted it in metal. Louis Poulsen told him no. The manufacturing of the day could not produce the mirrored finish he had in his head, so Panton accepted white opal acrylic and the lamp went into production as we now know it. Fifty-five years later, Poulsen has finally built it the way he wanted from the start.
That is the Panthella in one paragraph. One silhouette, drawn once, scaled five ways across the decades, and a designer whose original intent is still being completed by the company that makes it. The Panthella 160, 250, 320, 400, and Floor are not a family of lamps. They are one lamp, at five different scales, built from the same set of drawings Panton left behind.
Panton, Henningsen, and the break
To understand the Panthella you have to understand who introduced Panton to Louis Poulsen. It was Poul Henningsen, the architect behind the PH system and the most influential figure in twentieth-century Danish lighting. Henningsen was a generation older, already working with Poulsen, and he took the young Panton under his wing. The friendship lasted decades. Panton absorbed Henningsen's fundamental conviction that light should never glare, that the source must always be hidden, and that every surface in a fixture is doing optical work whether you see it or not.
Then Panton broke from it. Where Henningsen solved glare through layered geometric shades of brass and hand-rolled opal glass, Panton wanted a single continuous form. One curve. The shade and the base working as a single reflector rather than a set of discrete elements. Louis Poulsen's own archive confirms his intent: a lamp where both the stand and the shade serve as reflectors, using the organic shapes he was already known for elsewhere in his work. The PH 5 is geometry. The Panthella is gesture.
Panton was the enfant terrible of Danish design in the sixties and seventies. He worked briefly in Arne Jacobsen's office after graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and was reportedly one of Jacobsen's worst employees, not because he was lazy but because he was using company hours to draw his own work. He went on to design the Panton Chair, the Flowerpot lamp, and the Visiona environments for Bayer on the Rhine in 1968 and 1970. Visiona was the thinking the Panthella would compress into a single object: light, colour, and form as atmosphere rather than decoration. "The main purpose of my work," he said, "is to provoke people into using their imagination."
The Panthella is where Panton's total-environment thinking gets small enough to sit on a table. Everything he was doing at Visiona scale, he put into one silhouette.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
A detail worth landing: Panton originally drew the Panthella wanting a polished metal shade. Louis Poulsen's Design Manager Rasmus Markholt has confirmed this in interviews around the Panthella Mini launch. The technology of 1971 could not produce the finish Panton was after, so he accepted opal acrylic and the lamp entered production in white. Decades later, when injection moulding and metallising improved, Poulsen began releasing the Panthella in chrome and brass metallised finishes. Those are not alternative colourways. They are the lamp as Panton wanted it on day one, finally buildable.
Panthella Floor
The Floor is the Panthella at full volume. A 500 mm hemispherical shade sits on a slender white stem flaring into the same trumpet base as the table lamps, scaled up to 1,305 mm of overall height. Seen from across a room the silhouette reads immediately as Panton, even to people who could not name him. The shade casts a soft downward pool onto the base, and the base throws that light back up into the shade from below. What you see is a lamp lit from the inside, quietly, with no visible bulb and no visible glare.
This is the piece to anchor a reading chair in a living room, a corner in a bedroom, or the dead space next to a sofa where a pendant cannot reach. It reads as sculpture when it is off and as a light source only when it is on, which is the rarest quality a floor lamp can have. In an open-concept room with a 9- or 10-foot ceiling it gives you the vertical presence of a pendant without having to cut into drywall. View the Panthella Floor on habitus.ca.
Panthella 400 Table
The 400 is the one Panton actually drew in 1971. Everything else in the series descended from this shade and this base. A 400 mm hemisphere, the original proportion, sized for a console table, a sideboard, or the corner of a substantial dining table where you want the lamp to hold its own against a heavy wood top. At roughly 585 mm of total height it sits in the sweet spot where it can anchor a surface without competing with what goes on that surface.
In opal white it reads as quiet architecture. In chrome or brass it reads as a sculptural object that happens to light a room. If you are choosing a single Panthella to anchor a specific piece of furniture, this is the size the original design was balanced around. View the Panthella 400 Table on habitus.ca.
The question I get every week is whether to go 400 or 320 on a console. The 400 is for longer consoles in larger rooms. The 320 is for the majority of real-world consoles, where 400 starts to feel like the lamp is wearing the table rather than sitting on it.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
Panthella 320 Table
The 320 is the newest full-size Panthella in the range. Louis Poulsen introduced it in 2021 as a fiftieth-anniversary edition, slotting it between the original 400 and the Mini 250 to fill a size most people were actually asking for. A 320 mm shade is the dimension where the Panthella stops being a statement and starts being a furniture-scale lamp, the kind you can place on a bedside table, a living-room side table, or a narrow console without the lamp dominating the piece it sits on.
This is the Panthella I recommend first when a client is buying into the series for the first time. It carries the full design language at a scale that works in most Canadian homes without renegotiating the room around it. Metal finishes in particular shine at this size because the shade is large enough to catch a real reflection but small enough not to overwhelm. View the Panthella 320 Table on habitus.ca.
Panthella 250 Table
The 250, originally launched as the Panthella Mini in 2016, is the Panthella at the scale where it stops being a room-anchor and starts being a furniture accessory. A 250 mm shade and roughly 335 mm of total height make it one of the few design-grade lamps that actually fits on a windowsill or a narrow shelf, and it lights a specific zone of a room rather than the whole room. Desk, entry console, the end of a bookshelf, beside a bed where a 320 would crowd the nightstand.
It is the size where Panton's palette decisions matter most. Opal white recedes into the surface it sits on. Chrome and brass catch light from windows and adjacent fixtures and draw the eye across the room. At this scale the finish is doing more of the work than the silhouette is, because the silhouette is small enough to read as a detail rather than an object. View the Panthella 250 Table on habitus.ca.
Panthella 160 Portable
The 160 is the Panthella at its most intimate, and the only cordless version in the range. A 160 mm shade, roughly 238 mm tall, rechargeable via USB-C, with a touch dimmer on top of the shade. Eight and a half hours of runtime at full brightness, which covers an entire evening. Poulsen has gone further with colour on the 160 than on any other size in the series, reaching back into Panton's original palette with opal coral, opal rose, opal blue, opal green, indigo, and beige, alongside the metal finishes.
The 160 is what happens when the Panthella becomes truly portable. You can move it across a dinner party, set it on a bedside table for a night, bring it onto a covered patio in the summer, carry it into a rental where there is no good outlet. Buy one to see if the series fits your home, or buy two or three and scatter them across a long dining table the way you would with tea lights. View the Panthella 160 Portable on habitus.ca.
What clients do not realize until they see the colours in person is that the opal coral and the opal rose are almost completely different lamps when lit versus unlit. Unlit they are soft and quiet. Lit from inside they glow the colour of the shade, and the whole object shifts register.
Jenna, Interior Design Specialist
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Panthella size is right for a dining table?
It depends on the table. For a standard six-person dining table, the 320 or 400 works well as a single anchor at one end or on a nearby console. For longer tables of eight or more, buy two or three 160 Portables and scatter them along the length instead of hunting for one larger fixture. The effect is warmer and more dimensional.
What is the difference between the Panthella 160 Portable and the plug-in Panthella 250?
The 160 is battery-powered and cordless, rechargeable via USB-C, with roughly 8.5 hours of runtime at full brightness. The 250 is a plug-in lamp with an E14 socket and no battery. The 160 is built for portability and short-distance movement. The 250 is built to sit permanently on a surface with access to an outlet. They serve different jobs, not different budgets.
Is the Panthella Floor too tall for most living rooms?
At roughly 1,305 mm it sits at a natural seated eye level for a reader in a chair or sofa, which is the scale it was drawn for. It works in rooms with ceilings from 8 feet upward and reads particularly well in open-concept living spaces where it can anchor a corner without competing with a pendant. The slender stem and wide shade distribute the visual weight so the lamp feels lighter than its height suggests.
Why does the Panthella come in both opal acrylic and metal finishes?
Panton originally designed the Panthella in 1971 with a metal shade in mind, but the manufacturing technology of the period could not produce the finish he wanted. He accepted opal acrylic and the lamp went into production in white. Decades later, improvements in moulding and metallising made chrome and brass finishes possible, and Louis Poulsen released them as a return to Panton's original intent.
Can the Panthella 160 Portable be used outside?
Yes, on a dry covered surface such as a patio or balcony. It is not rated for permanent outdoor use or exposure to rain, but it is designed to be moved freely between indoor and outdoor settings. Bring it inside overnight and when weather turns. The battery is sealed and the finish is robust, but treat it the way you would treat any design piece you love and want to keep.
The Panthella at every scale is the same lamp doing different jobs. The Floor anchors a corner or a reading chair. The 400 carries a console or a long table at the scale Panton originally drew. The 320 is the furniture-scale Panthella that works in most Canadian homes without renegotiating the room. The 250 is the detail size, where finish does more work than silhouette. The 160 Portable is the intimate version, the one that moves around the house and the one that finally returns Panton's original colour palette to the series. One silhouette, five scales, one design conviction that Louis Poulsen has spent fifty-five years carrying forward without redrawing a line.
If you are building a room around the Panthella or working out which pieces in the series belong in which part of your home, our in-house design team works with clients across Canada on everything from single-room consultations to full interior projects.
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