The clocks have not gone back yet, but the evenings already have. By the middle of autumn the daylight is gone before dinner, and the part of the day you actually spend at home is the dark part. A lot of us respond by flicking on the big ceiling light and leaving it there — which is bright, and even, and does almost nothing for the room. This is the time of year people start hunting for a smaller, softer light to put in a corner instead.
A star projector is one answer, and it is worth being clear about what one actually is before you buy, because the category is full of gadgets that promise far more than they do.
What a star projector actually is
Stripped back, it is a small lamp with a picture in front of the light. You fit a film slide into it, switch it on, and it projects the picture on that slide onto the ceiling or across a wall. That is the whole idea. The good ones do that one job cleanly; the rest bolt on features you will use once and then forget.
Our Galaxy Starry Sky Projector (£34.99) is deliberately on the simple end. It has a single white light source — one 3W LED — and one button, which does on and off. There is no menu to learn and nothing to set up. You point it where you want the picture, and that is the extent of the operating instructions.
The slides are the whole trick
Because the picture lives on the slide rather than in the lamp, what shows on the wall is simply whichever slide is fitted. This one comes with four, named Moon, The Milky Way, Aurora Borealis and Comet Earth — two on ultra-clear glass and two on high-definition film — and you swap them freely to change what it shows. Fit one, and that is the picture until you change your mind and fit another.
It is a low-commitment way to change the feel of a room. A different slide on a Sunday evening is a different corner, for the price of ten seconds of fiddling — which is more than you can say for most lighting, where the only choice is on or off. If it is warmth rather than a picture you are chasing on a dark evening, a flame-free candlelight glow does a different version of the same job.
Made to sit down and be left alone
The practical details are what decide whether a light like this earns its corner or ends up in a drawer. This one is small — 83 × 77 × 169 mm, and roughly 263 g — so it sits on a bedside table or a shelf without taking it over. You can run it plugged in over TYPE-C, or off its built-in 1600mAh 18500 lithium battery for around five hours, which is enough for an evening without a cable across the floor. A charge takes about two hours, and the cable is in the box.
The housing is ABS and PC, and the single white LED keeps the whole thing honest: this is a calm corner light, not a light show. If what you are after is a wall of shifting colour, this is not that, and we would rather say so now than have you disappointed later.
Where to put it this autumn
Lower and closer than you would guess. The mistake people make with any small light is to push it to the edge of the room as if it were meant to light the whole space; the appeal is the opposite. A bedside table, the corner of a desk, a shelf you glance at from the sofa — somewhere it is near you while you wind down, rather than lighting a room you are trying to make feel smaller. Point it at the ceiling above the bed, or at the stretch of wall you actually look at, and leave it there.
Two housekeeping notes. It holds a lithium battery, so it is an indoor thing that lives on a flat surface, not something to leave on a wet sill. And because it is the sort of light you will often forget to switch off, put it somewhere your hand falls on that one button without thinking.
It is in stock in our UK warehouse, with delivery in three to seven days, and there is a 30-day return window from the day it arrives — because whether a small light like this suits your particular corner is a decision best made in your own front room, with the big light off. If you are still deciding whether one is for you at all — whether it does anything at bedtime, and whether it is just a children's gadget — we go into that in do star projectors help you sleep? Or if you are buying it for someone else, here is whether a star projector makes a good gift.