Most of the lamps that leave my workshop go to people who want something beautiful on the sideboard, or who collect them. But over the past few years I've seen a second group grow steadily: people buying a kerosene lamp because they want light in the house when the electricity stops.

It's a sensible thing to buy for it. A good lamp sits on the shelf looking like an antique for years, and then, on the one evening you need it, it works — no batteries, no charging, no app.

Why more people are keeping a lantern in the cupboard

Here in the Netherlands the grid is stable and outages are usually measured in minutes. But the network is changing fast: more solar and wind, more digital control, more load on cables that were laid for a different century. Longer outages are becoming less unthinkable than they were, and heavier storms don't help.

Elsewhere this is simply normal. In Delhi a blackout is part of the week. In the United States, hurricanes in Texas and Florida, wildfires in California and ice storms in Michigan leave millions of people without power every year — sometimes for days.

Oil lamps have been doing this job for well over a hundred years. Nothing about the design has needed to change, which tells you something.

Advertisement for an oil lamp to use during a blackout.

A candle or a lantern?

Most emergency kits contain a torch and a handful of candles. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's worth knowing what you're comparing.

A tea light gives you roughly four hours and about as much light as, well, a candle. Take a Feuerhand Baby Special 276 — the most common hurricane lantern still in production — and you have a 340 ml tank, a 12.5 mm wick and around twenty hours of burning on one filling. It can be carried from room to room in the wind without going out, it won't tip over easily, and the flame sits behind glass.

That last point matters more than people expect. A lantern with an open flame you can pick up and carry is a very different object from a candle on a saucer.

On this page, you’ll find detailed information about the different types of kerosene lamps and what to consider before buying one.

Oil lamp, kerosene lamp, hurricane lantern — which is which?

People use oil lamp for almost everything, so a quick word on the terms.

An oil lamp burns oil, but every burner and wick is built for a particular kind of oil. What's sold as "lamp oil" covers a lot of different products, each refined for a different application. The lamps most people use indoors are built for kerosene (paraffin). On this site you'll see oil lamp and kerosene lamp used for the same thing.

A hurricane lantern is the portable kind with the glass globe and the tubes running down each side. The tubes are the whole trick: they feed air to the flame from above, which is why the flame survives a gust that would put out a candle instantly.

New or antique?

You can buy a brand-new kerosene lamp, and some of them are good. But a lot of what's produced today is stamped out cheaply in China or India, with thin metal, poor plating and burners that never quite sit straight.

An old lamp was made when this was serious equipment and the maker's name on the tank meant something. That's why I sell them. The trade-off is that an antique lamp needs checking before you trust it: a sound tank, a burner that raises and lowers the wick smoothly, and the right glass. All of that is described per lamp in the shop.

Small lamps: bedside lamps, small hurricane lanterns, miner's lamps

If you want the light of a candle but better — atmosphere, a hallway, a bedside — a small lamp is enough. A small hurricane lantern, an oil night lamp or a miner's lamp will all give you noticeably more light than a candle.

Burn time is simply wick width against tank size. A narrow wick sips fuel and can run for a long night; a wide wick in a small tank will not.

Medium lamps: where the light really starts

More light means a wider wick, and a wide flat wick on its own burns restlessly — flickering, soot, and that smell people associate with paraffin. The answer the Germans arrived at in the 1860s was the Kosmos burner, and later the Matador: a round wick holder carrying a broad flat wick, with a chimney shaped to match. The flame is far brighter and, more importantly, far steadier.

The Kosmos is by far the most common burner you'll meet on the second-hand market, which also means wicks and glasses are easy to find. It turns up in a kitchen lamp, which can stand on a table or hang from a wall bracket, and in standing table lamps.

A larger hurricane lantern is the other route: depending or you want to carry it with you or not.

Large lamps: maximum light

The rule doesn't change — bigger burner, wider wick, more light. At this size you also get lamps with a frosted or etched glass shade, which spreads the light and takes the hard edge off it. These are the lamps that make a room look like a painting, and they'll still be lighting it at midnight when the power is out.

Have a look at the Tips & Tricks section of this website, where I go into more detail on how to actually use an oil lamp — How to use an Oil Lamp — and on which fuel to put in it, which matters more than most people think: Fuel for Oil Lamps. More tips and tricks will be added there over time, so it's worth coming back.

Or have a look in the webshop at the oil lamps on this site to find a lamp you can actually put to use. Always read the full description and look closely at the photos, because with antiques the detail is the point.