As part of my recent home renovation project, I'd planned to have lighting wired into my bedroom on either side of the bed. The idea was to have matching pendants hanging down on both the left and the right. But when the electrician needed to know where to place his light outlets I was in the middle of stressing about something else renovation-related.

I couldn't really think about the question too hard, so he just placed them in the center of the ceiling and was done with it. And so began my extensive collection of bedside lights that have been acquired over time. None of them match.

And because I always like to seek assurances from the professionals, I've checked in with a few of my favorite interior designers to see what they thought about this. Does it matter? Should they match? Or should they in fact not match at all? Happily, they all unanimously agreed on where the trend for modern bedroom lighting was going, setting out a blueprint for all future renovations and lighting projects going forward. The short answer is no.

Bedside lamps do not need to match each other, according to interior designers. They had several reasons as to why. 'Once an area catered only for table lamps, now bedside lighting gives us the opportunity to be creative,' says the designer Lee Broom , based in New York and London.

He designed the space above, which has one of his Crescent table lamps on one side and three of his corresponding Crescent pendant lights on the other. 'I don’t believe each.