Lava lamps

pic by cnraether

You don’t get much more retro than the lava lamp! This is almost synonymous with the sixties and seventies and saw quite a revival in the 90s too! Now it’s just here to stay!

How does a lava lamp work?

No actual lava in a lava lamp! The lamp is basically a closed glass contained of water with a special wax mixture suspended in a blob inside. The water is heated, and the wax with it, and because of its special composition, the wax becomes less dense than the water around it and so rises to the top. As it reaches the top the water becomes cooler and so the wax begins to cool too, and slowly drops down again for a soothing, psychedelic effect, often helped by different colored lights (and some groovy tunes).

Buying a lava lamp

There are plenty of them here in our listings - you can find lava lamps for less than $20 for a modern imitation, but wouldn’t it be more fun to track down an original Mathmos lamp from 1963, say? It wouldn’t cost much more and would really give your chill-out room that authentic sixties feel!