The lamp is too tall for the opening in front of it. Measure the standing height, the widest part of the shade, and the clear gap of the doorway with the door as open as it goes. If the shade lifts off by hand, take it off and measure the stem again. A booking that says “the lights” will be read as a bag of fittings. This note is one floor lamp.
A fan fixed to the ceiling is not this lamp. That job is unconfirmed here, and this page does not describe how to take one down. A light screwed to the wall is a fitting, not a floor lamp. Leave it on the wall.
Shade, stem and base
Stand where you can see the whole lamp. Name three parts, even if they are still joined: the shade or bowl, the stem or arm, and the base. A photo of the shade alone is a photo of a shade. The base is what makes it a floor lamp, and the stem is what makes it tall.
Look at the shade before you pull anything. A finial on top that turns by hand can come off. Lift the shade clear of the harp or the arms that hold it, and set it down. A shade that lifts off with no finial, because it is only sitting on a ring, lifts off. A glass bowl that sits loose on an uplighter lifts off the same way. If the finial does not turn and the shade does not lift, stop. Write “shade still on”. Do not knife the fabric, and do not crack a glass edge to force a gap.
Put a glass or brittle shade on a flat spot with a towel or a sheet under it, whether that cloth is leaving or staying. Say which. Do not stand the shade on a bare tiled floor and then walk away. If the shade is fabric and it is leaving, it can sit beside the stem. If you are keeping the shade and sending the rest, move the shade out of the photograph of the pieces that leave.
The stem stays a stem. Do not saw it. Do not bend an arm that does not already fold. Do not pull the cord out of the stem to make the lamp shorter. The cord inside the stem is not a handle. If the stem meets the base at a joint you can undo by hand, and you can see the joint is a collar rather than a place the cable enters, you may separate those two parts and say “stem off the base, by hand”. If you are unsure whether the cable runs through that joint, leave the lamp as one piece and write “joint not opened”.
An arc lamp has a long reach as well as a height. Measure from the base to the far edge of the shade, and measure the standing height. If the arm already folds at a hinge you can close without a tool, close it and measure again. If the arm is fixed, write “arm fixed” and do not lean on it to change the shape.
A tripod has three legs. Measure the footprint while the legs are as they stand. If the legs fold at hinges you can close by hand, close them, stand the lamp so it cannot fall, and measure the new width. If they do not fold, write “legs fixed open”. A base that is a slab of stone or a metal plate does not come off because it looks heavy. Photograph the base. The shade-only picture will not show it.
The cord is a fourth line only because it trails. Find the plug. Unplug it from the socket. If the lamp is plugged into an extension lead, unplug the lamp from the lead. The lead stays if you still use it. Coil the lamp cord so it is not under the base and not across the doorway. If the plug is behind a sofa you are keeping, and you cannot reach it without dragging that sofa onto the cord, write “plug not seen”. Do not cut the cord.
A bulb that unscrews by hand comes out so it does not shatter inside a shade you are about to move. If you are keeping bulbs, put it with them. If it is leaving, wrap it and write “bulb, separate”. A tube you cannot name stays whole. Do not break it to fit it in a bag, and do not hide it in the shade. Write “tube left out, not broken”. This page does not assign that tube to a disposal route.
The opening you will actually use
Walk to the door the lamp has to pass. Open that door as far as it opens. The clear height is the gap you can see, not the height of the door slab while the door is shut. The clear width is the gap between the frame and the door edge, or between the frames if the door swings clear. A door that stops against a shoe or a rug is not fully open. Move the shoe. Measure again.
Write four figures: lamp height as it will travel, shade width if the shade is still on or the stem width if the shade is off, base width, and the doorway’s clear height and clear width. If the arc is the long piece, add that length. Put the tape in the photo or write the figures on a note you photograph beside the lamp. “Taller than the door” is the reason you are here. The figures are what the next person can use.
Compare them yourself, in the note, in one sentence you measured: shade off or still on, and whether the stem or the shade is taller or wider than the clear opening, by the difference you read on the tape. Do not replace a missing measurement with a guess about a standard door. This page does not keep a standard. If you have no tape, say “not measured” and do not invent the numbers. A lamp you have not measured is not ready to describe as unable to pass, and it is not ready to describe as able to pass.
The shade can be the part that fails even when the stem would pass. A wide drum shade, still on the lamp, meets the frame before the stem does. That is why the shade comes off when it comes off by hand, and why a shade that will not come off has to be in the width figure. A bowl on an uplighter is that shade. Measure the bowl, not the pole alone.
If the shade is off and the stem still stands taller than the clear height, say so. Do not lay the lamp down and call the problem solved if you have not checked the length of the stem against the width of the opening and against the turn outside the door. State the length. The bulky-item note is the wider method: one object, photographs, and the narrowest point on the way to the vehicle. Use that method for the corridor, the lift and the turn. Stay on this page for the shade, the stem, the base and this doorway. Do not send two descriptions that disagree about whether the shade is still on.
A second doorway can be tighter than the first. The room door may be wide and the apartment door narrow, or the reverse. Measure the tighter one, and name which door it is. A lamp that passes the bedroom door and stops at the front door is still a lamp that does not pass. The photo has to show the opening that stops it, not only the opening that does not.
Furniture you are keeping can block the opening you just measured. A chair pulled back into the gap is a new width. A curtain dropped across the frame is a new height. Tie or move what you are keeping, then measure if the gap changed. Do not book the gap you had before you moved the chair back.
The general question of whether a piece of furniture should come apart is the dismantling guide. That page is a wardrobe, a bed, a table, a sofa. A shade that lifts off a floor lamp is not that job. If the lamp is a light built into a cabinet, you are on the cabinet’s own note, not this one. Do not unscrew a wardrobe to free a lamp that was not a floor lamp.
What is not a floor lamp
A table lamp is shorter than this problem. If it sits on a table and the shade is not the tall object in the room, write “table lamp” and keep it off this note. It can leave in the same visit only as its own line, with its own plug and its own shade, without borrowing this doorway comparison.
A pair of floor lamps is two lamps. This page prepares the one whose standing height meets the doorway. If the second is also tall, give it the same shade check and the same four figures, under a second name. If the second is short, say “second lamp, not the tall one” and do not hide it in the shade of the first.
A framed picture on the wall beside the lamp is not the lamp. Taking that frame down, with the glazing still in it, is the framed-picture note. Do not take the picture down to make standing room unless you mean to send the picture, and then it follows that note. Do not call the lamp a frame because both are tall.
A whole flat of beds, wardrobes and tables is the apartment furniture plan. The lamp is one line on that list when the flat is leaving. Come back to this page for the shade and the doorway. Do not paste the lamp into “bedroom” and hope the height is obvious.
A ceiling fan stays unconfirmed. Do not book one by describing it as a tall lamp, and do not remove the blades to make the sentence fit. A wall light stays on the wall. Write “wall fitting, not a floor lamp” if someone has grouped it with this lamp, and do not unscrew it under these steps.
A base screwed or bolted to the floor is not free. Write “base fixed to the floor”. Do not unscrew the floor, and do not rock the base until the fixing gives. This page starts when the lamp already stands free. Until it does, it is not the object in the measurements.
A lamp you are sending to another room in the same home, still yours, is not a collection. This note is for the lamp that is leaving the property. If a mover is taking it to a new address to keep using it, say that to the mover. Do not use a disposal booking as a way to relocate a lamp you still want.
The message, then the morning
The picture is a sofa, a chair, a cabinet and shelving beside a doorway. It does not show a floor lamp, a shade, a stem or a base. Use it only as a reminder that furniture next to a door is a different object from this lamp. Your own photos still have to show the lamp and the opening together.
You can carry the lamp out with the furniture once the shade is either off or still on and named, the cord is unplugged or marked unseen, and the figures are in the message. That page is the furniture leaving the room. It is not a ceiling-fan visit, and it is not a request to cut a stem.
Say, in one message:
- one floor lamp, and the room
- shade off, or shade still on, and whether the shade is glass, fabric or a bowl
- stem still on the base, or off by a joint you opened by hand
- arm fixed, arm folded, or legs fixed open, if the lamp is an arc or a tripod
- the height, the width that matters, the base, and the clear height and width of the doorway that stops it, naming that door
- plug out, or “plug not seen”
- bulb out and kept, bulb wrapped and leaving, or a tube left whole
- anything that is not this lamp: a table lamp, a picture, a wall fitting, a fan
Do not write “lights” as the only word. Do not write a height you did not measure. Do not ask for the stem to be sawn because the figure is larger than the gap. The figure is the report. A cut is not a step on this page.
If the shade is still on and you have not tried the finial, you are early. Try it. If it will not turn, the shade-on measurement is the honest one. Send that.
On the morning, stand the lamp where the photos stood it, or lay the separated shade where the photos laid it. Check the plug is still out. Check a glass shade is still on the cloth you named. Open the door to the gap you measured. A rug kicked into the opening changes the width. Move it before you treat the old figure as current.
Point at the shade, the stem and the base as the lamp. Point at a picture only if it is on the picture note. Point at a fan or a wall light only to show that it is staying. The useful record is the sentence from the first measurement: one free-standing lamp, shade accounted for, cord unplugged or unseen, and the doorway’s clear opening written beside the lamp’s own height.
