I’m in Milan, daaaarlings, swanning around palazzos full of dimly lit furniture, sipping a tiny espresso and trying not to trip over any exhibits. The city has a great reputation for cutting edge design, and high-profile designers always display items here that will be influencing our own interiors tastes for years to come.

If you’re feeling envious however, there is really no need, as some of the world’s most ingenious, elegant and downright unbelievable design is available to buy over the web. I’ve been looking at the lighting selection of Pink Apple Designs, an online retailer specialising in bringing some of the biggest names in European design – think Kartell, Vitra, Flos and Cassina – direct to your door. Lighting is an area in which designers really take flight, and the offering at Pink Apple really reflects this ambition. Above is the Foscarini Plass Suspension Light. I love this, although it probably looks best in the aforementioned palazzo, where oodles of space would let you hang them by the dozen.

Above is Flos Cicatrices de Luxe by Philippe Starck, ideal for homes where someone else does the dusting. The light glows gently through each glass vase and decanter. It looks so inventive and has also proved to be very influential on a younger generation of lighting designers working with cut glass and bottle shapes.

Top of my own wish list would be something more modest, however. By Normann, the Hello light is so simple and smooth and beautifully proportioned that it looks almost human. The rest of the lighting on this page might be spectacular or directional, but for a bit of bedtime reading this fella strikes me as just right.

This is a sponsored post written by My Friend’s House.