It’s remarkable what a little moonlight can do for some folks. The rest of us look forward to the arrival of shorter days with about as much anticipation as we have for giving the tub a good scrub. Alas, we must soon bid farewell to evening barbecues at dusk and prepare for the daily challenge of getting home from work before dark. But as long nights become the norm, your house can be your haven. If, that is, you know how to light it.

Before we get into the science of watts and lumens, let’s talk about a more essential lighting element: form. There’s a fixture to suit everyone’s style at Chimera, a converted South Boston warehouse that feels like a museum chronicling illumination through the ages. Many of the hundreds of variations it sells are feats of design. Fortunately, you need not be content with merely ogling the antique styles, retro models, and hanging pendant fixtures ($171–$391) that can make your inner chamber look like an upside-down garden of Venetian blown-glass blossoms: everything here is for sale.

In addition to several attention-commanding table lamps, Chimera offers a number of variations on the task lamp, the kind with the robotic-type arm that bends at several joints for maneuverability ($265–$360). Need a reading lamp that conserves space? Take home your own masterpiece of Italian innovation: a sample from the Light Volume collection ($260), which features an arched plexiglass shell holding a bulb, zipped up in a heavy polyester sleeve. In other words, it’s a pillow with a built-in light.

If winter makes you yearn for the days of patio parties, pick up a lantern-style shade ($8–$32) at the Door Store. It offers a variety of shapes and sizes of the gossamer rice-paper structures, from spheres to pyramids to slinky columns, all of which are designed to hang from a bulb on a cord (kit, $14). For a Zen effect, freestanding bamboo table lamps ($51) will inspire you to pick up the yoga habit you dropped as quickly as your winter coat last spring.

Perhaps you’re out to create a lounge-y feel in your lair. Filene’s Basement stocks its shelves with the appropriate ambiance-adjusters. You’ll find lamps with bases of weathered copper or carved marble-esque plastic, crowned with embroidered shades that are bedecked with beads or generously festooned with feathers ($34.99–$49.99). You might find the effects enlightening.

Where to get it:

• Chimera, 319 A Street, South Boston, (617) 542-3233.

• Door Store, 940 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 547-8937.

• Filene’s Basement, 426 Washington Street, Boston, (617) 348-7934.