Panthella 160 vs 250 Portable: Which Size Fits Your Room

Louis Poulsen builds the Panthella Portable in two sizes, and the distance between them is wider than the 90 mm of diameter suggests. The V3 editions differ in height, in shade material, in how long a charge lasts and in how much of a room they can carry. Here is how to choose between Ø160 mm and Ø250 mm.

One design, drawn twice

Verner Panton designed the Panthella for Louis Poulsen in 1971. The principle has not moved since: shade and trumpet-shaped base act as one continuous reflector, so the light source stays out of sight and everything you see has already bounced off two curved surfaces. That is why a Panthella can sit at eye level on a dining table without anyone squinting, and why its light reads as soft rather than bright.

The cordless editions keep that geometry and remove the flex. Both the Panthella 160 Portable Lamp V3 and the Panthella 250 Portable Lamp V3 carry a touch switch set into the top nut, step dimming, USB-C charging and a white charge indicator on the base. Scale is the real variable, and scale decides where each lamp earns its place.

The two sizes side by side

One line in that table deserves a footnote. The 160 is quoted at up to 8.5 hours at full brightness, the 250 at roughly 5.5 hours at 33% brightness, so the two figures are not measured on the same basis and should not be read as a straight ranking. Both refill over USB-C from an adapter of at least 1.5 A, with a small white indicator on the base to show that charging is under way.

How each size behaves in a room

Panthella 160 Portable

At Ø160 mm and 241 mm tall, the smaller V3 takes up about the footprint of a cup and saucer and weighs 0.9–1.0 kg, so it can be lifted and resettled with one hand while the other holds a plate. Its built-in LED runs at 2.5 W and 2700 K, which is a warm, low output: a pool of light for one person, one book, one place setting. Louis Poulsen describes it as a bedside, balcony or shelf lamp, and that is an accurate account of what it does. Two or three of them spaced along a long table give a dinner more atmosphere than a single larger lamp at one end ever will. The shade is polymer in opal, opaque or metallised finishes and the base is injection-moulded recycled polymer, which is part of why it stays so light in the hand.

Panthella 250 Portable

The 250 stands 346 mm tall at Ø250 mm, a clear head above its smaller sibling, and weighs 1.0 kg. Its LED runs at 6 W and 2700 K for a stated 456 lm, enough that the lamp reads as a table lamp in its own right rather than as an accessory to one. Put it on a sideboard, a console or the table beside a sofa and it holds that corner of the room on its own. The shade is injection-moulded acrylic in the opal colours and polycarbonate in the opaque ones, over a polycarbonate base (ABS on the chrome versions). It is rated IP44 for indoor and outdoor use, so a long evening on a balcony or a terrace table is within its remit.

Switch, dimming and charging

Both lamps are operated by touch on the top nut, and both dim in fixed steps rather than sliding continuously, which keeps the settings repeatable: you learn where your evening level is and return to it. The 160 adds a long-press lock, a small thing that matters if the lamp travels in a bag, gets carried outdoors or lives somewhere small hands can reach it.

Charging is USB-C on both, from an adapter rated at 1.5 A or more, and the white indicator on the base tells you where you are. A lamp used every evening is easiest to live with if it goes on charge overnight as a habit rather than being run flat and refilled in a hurry. Practically, that routine matters more for the 250, whose quoted run time is the shorter of the two even at a third of full output.

Colour, finish and the final call

The palettes overlap without matching. The 160 V3 is listed in nineteen finishes, the 250 V3 in seventeen, and both include the Original opal shades (orange, red, brown and green) that return Panton's own colours, alongside the softer opal beige, pale rose and pale blue and the flat opaques in black, coral, moss green, burgundy and indigo blue. Brass metallised and high lustre chrome plated appear on the 160 list only. As a rule of thumb: opal shades glow through and light the surrounding surfaces, opaque shades keep their colour on the outside and send the light downwards, and the chrome and metallised finishes reflect the room back at you.

Choose the 160 if the lamp will move often, if it has to share a table with glasses and plates, or if you would rather have two or three lights than one. Choose the 250 if it needs to do the work of a corded table lamp, if it will spend evenings outdoors and the IP44 rating is doing something for you, or if the surface is large enough that the smaller lamp would look tentative on it. If both appeal, a 250 as the fixed point with a pair of 160s as movable satellites is a sound arrangement, and the colour ranges are close enough to keep them related.

There is also the earlier Panthella 250 Portable Lamp V2, built with a white opal acrylic shade over an aluminium base, if that particular construction is what you are after. For a wider view of the cordless format, our round-up of portable designer lamps covers the alternatives, and the full Portable Lamps collection shows how the two Panthellas sit beside the rest of the category.