Despite terrible reviews (a favorite at allmodern.com summarized the light as "looks great, works poopie"), we chose the George Kovacs Madake Swing Arm Wall Lamp, in large part because it looked great, worked with our gestalt, and the next light up that met our design requirements required a $1,000 a piece (gulp).
One of the issues brought up in reviews of Kovacs' light is that the transformer for the little fluorescent bulb burnt themselves up in short order (with no hope of a replacement). Sure enough, a couple months in, I heard a disturbing crackling sound inside the base of my light and, after a short bright spell, the thing went dead. So I bought another one. A couple months after that, there goes the bride's light. A month after that there goes the replacement. A marvel of modern mis-engineering (and stunning that crap like this is sold years after it becomes evident that something is terribly wrong!).
After replacing the first one, I looked at the inside bits, and thought "Hmmmm: I could switch out the guts with an IKEA LED system." Acting on that hmmmmm'd moment, I did just that.
The results are not as bright as the previous light, but this actually is a good thing for us: There's enough light for reading when the lamp is swung around, but not so much that my partner complains it's too bright. And it is surely more energy efficient.
Not a task for a novice, but with a few bucks spent at the local IKEA store, I was able to save these lights from the landfill.
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