Hands on: Philips LivingColors Iris & Micro LED lamps

If your experience of coloured lighting extends to Christmas trees, yet you have a hankering for more colour in your life, check out Philips LivingColors lamps. They're small globes fitted with LEDs that can create a huge range of user selected colours.

There's two models in the range. The Iris is larger, comes equipped with a remote and can produce an impressive 16 million colours for $299. The smaller non-remote equipped Micro costs $99 and can produce 64 colours.

They mightn't be cheap, but my initial sticker shock faded once I factored their LED capabilities into the mix.

For a start they have a whopping 100,000-hour lifespan. They also consume a fraction of the energy of an incandescent light-bulb. Not only can they change colour, but they also don't heat up, making them safe for use with kids.

In use, their colour change capabilities can dramatically transform the mood of a room. Sliding your finger across a touch sensitive strip on the Micro lets you choose a colour, or you can dial one in on the Iris's remote.

The Micro and the Iris can also cycle through their entire colour palette, adding a hint of psychedelia to proceedings.

They're pretty nifty looking. The Micro is a small round white globe with a flat base. Its pretty, yet unobtrusive design should have wide appeal. Also a globe, the Iris is crafted out of a dark transparent perspex finish reminiscent of a prop from Space: 1999.

If that's the good, what's the not so good?

Even though either model will set you back a fair wedge of cash, the single biggest bugbear for many will be brightness, or the lack of it. Belting out about 120 Lumens, they're about as bright as a conventional 15 watt bulb.

This said, both appear to have been designed as accent lights, so room filling brightness isn't what they're about. I can however confirm that the Iris also did a passable job as a reading lamp (it can also crank out white light).

Adding some atmosphere to a room, be it a cool sophisticated blue or a warm autumn accent is dead easy with both the Iris and the Micro LivingColors lamps.