Form Plus Function

Form Plus Function Showroom Santa Fe New Mexico

After four pretty stressful weeks where we had to run across the parking lot between our old location and our beautiful new showroom, we finally have phone service, which allowed us to move in.
It is SO wonderful! The space is beautiful and we are filling it with spectacular light fixtures and some really spectacular small pieces of furniture.
PLEASE come visit as soon as you can!

In Santa Fe that’s all we have to tell our customers and they know what we are talking about – and why we are so excited.

We import these beautiful candles from Denmark and just got a huge shipment in.

These candles are practically dripless (honestly!!), burn for 13 hours and come in 45 beautiful and unique colors.
The price did go up this time. After having been able to keep the price at $1 each for the past 12 years price increases and the exchange rate has forced us to raise the price to $1.50.

Ingo Maurer Knueller

The Ingo Maurer floor lamp Knueller is a true hit.
The name of this unique floor lamp is, as is the case with so many names for Ingo Maurer fixtures, a play on words. A Knueller in German means a hit and at the same time the verb “knuellen” means crumbling something up.
The shade is a spherical cage that holds randomly crumbled tissue to diffuse the light. (No worries: It is designed so that there is no fire hazard!)
The Knueller floor lamp continues the interactive lighting concepts so often presented by Ingo Maurer by enabling the user to crumble tissue paper randomly and develop the look of their diffuser.

Ingo Maurer Oh Mei Ma White



Contemporary lighting is generally characterized by simple, clean lines and an overall uncluttered look.
Being the style of the present, contemporary design is, however, dynamic and constantly evolving and allows room for lots of
creative ideas of the moment. Contemporary lighting is therefore a lot different today than it was 50 years ago when modernism
was in its infancy and there was a clear focus on pure functionalism.
Today we see a vibrant mix of creative ideas in contemporary lighting that reach from urban chic to industrial functionalism,
Tuscan charm to stark minimalism.
Contrasts are welcome. We see stainless steel paired with crystals, handmade paper with concrete and other eclectic mixes
of textures and materials.
Track lighting and recessed lighting are frequently used to light a room in contemporary style, accompanied by individual "Wow"
pieces like a contemporary chandelier with a sculptural presence or a striking floor lamp.

Linear Chandelier by Michael McHale

Just stumbled upon the wonderfully creative chandeliers by Michael McHale and it was love at first sight!!
His tongue-in-cheek approach to the dining room or foyer staple  combines reclaimed plumbing pipes  with high quality Bohemian or Swarowski crystal. The result is surprisingly  elegant with an industrial, charming twist.

Affordable Contemporary Lighting

At Form + Function we want to show that contemporary lighting can be affordable.We offer hundreds of wall sconces, pendant lights, outdoor lighting starting at under $50.

Click on the images to enter our online showroom for some great prices and discounts.

Form + Function is 25!

Add Some Color to Your Life – and Some Music!

Place your order today and enter our drawing for a FREE 8 GB IPod Nano.
Can’t beat the odds, we have a weekly drawing!!

Any order is eligible: Sale items, Non-Sale items.

All you need to do is place your order. We will announce the weekly winner here AND contact you to ask which color you’d like.

My son just moved to Madison, WI, and is sitting among unopened boxes, trying to find the most important things to get started making his new digs a home. Whenever he makes a whimper about how hard it is to move everything you have accumulated over 10 years I sigh and say Tell me all about it!
At this very moment we are looking at the logistics nightmare of moving an entire warehouse into smaller quarters.
Why are we doing this insane thing?

Well, after ten years in a huge drafty space that was really not designed as a showroom, our lease was up and we had found the most wonderful smaller space around the corner: Pacheco Park, a contemporary design center kind of off the beaten path, but  surrounded by a bunch of other great, well-established design-related businesses.

Our warehouse stayed put for a while, since there are no new tenants in the old space, but now we are moving!
I don’t know what it is, but these times give me the urge to take a step back and reevaluate the situation.Do we need all this stuff to operate efficiently? The reality is that we have stocked up and stocked up, just because it felt good, kind of like having a full pantry before the Holidays.
But with our vendors being extremely efficient and shipping practically the same day it seems like excess what we have been doing.

After having cleaned, sorted and hauled tons of stuff to Habitat for Humanity and Open Hands we thought the sprawl was under control and started our move.
Well, we’re halfways done and and are realizing that it’s time for a BIG warehouse clearance sale to get us to the efficient level we want to operate from in the future.
Paul (above)  who many of you probably have spoken to on the phone is our Man for Every Challenge. Without him there would be no move!

So, how do you go about selling literally tons of light fixtures that are really great in quality, design, form and function? We’re not talking a bunch of junk, but designer lighting that there are people out there looking for?

Well, for starters we added all our stock still left in the old warehouse to our SALE page on our site. Do check it out. There are some real bargains on designer lighting . We just need to get the word out.

HELP US!!!  We’re ready to offer a lot of stuff at incredible prices just to get this over with and done!

We don’t want our lamps to come back to visit!

Form + Function is not just a web based business that distributes lighting all over the country. We meet our customers face-to-face every day and talk with them about their needs.

We unfortunately also have people walk through the door with a broken lamp under their arm and we cringe every time it happens. Now we get to fix it or package it up and send it back to the manufacturer. So, it is truly in OUR best interest never to have this happen.

We definitely like our customers and love visiting with them, but we only want to see them return because they were happy with what they got from us. For that particular reason we are removing any light fixture that seems to have problems from our showroom as well as our site.

Some problems might not even be that visible. We have just blacklisted a great series of floor-and table lamps that we really liked: They sell well because they are good looking, well priced, sturdy, have all the bells and whistles in adjustability – BUT you can’t exchange the light bulb without intensive work, bandaids and multiple words I can’t repeat here. You won’t believe how often we see our poor customers drag their lamp into our store to have Paul, our expert, exchange the bulb.

I just ask: Did the manufacturer never try to exchange the bulb?

We have now been at our new location for three full months and things are starting to look just the way we envisioned it. This for sure is not your run-of-the-mill lighting showroom!  And that’s just what we intended. We are aiming for a lot more. I’ll explain:

After 24 years in the lighting business a lot of things came together to make us want to change – well, EVERYTHING.

From very humble beginnings we had grown and and expanded, and up until three months ago we occupied 12.000 sq ft. filled to the brim with lighting, with some furniture and home accessories thrown in. (How else do you display 20 different types of desk lamps? )

Business was bustling on the web as well as in our Santa Fe showroom, where we also have our offices. Over the years we had created a very unique showroom with a loyal customer base. Life was good. – Kind of.  It had little by little become obvious to us that something vital was missing: Time to do things right.  Really right. We were insanely busy, stressed, over-extended, and frustrated over being torn in all kinds of directions.

With all the exciting changes in “green” product development a lot is happening and the lighting business is an exciting place to be.

We wanted to be allowed to focus on what is important to us: Being able to be there for our customers is definitely high up there on our priority list. Not just sell stuff, but make our knowledge base available and have fun working with the people who walk in the door.

We got it!

The new place is a charm! Lots of vignettes, interactive displays, places to sit down and pour over literature, samples. Soon our tv monitors on the walls will show videos or power point presentations about our products, allow our customers to surf our site……

Can’t wait to tell more and show you more photos – next time….

Form + Function Showroom

“We’ll show you the most fun you’ll have with the lights on!”