Mount a Flos String Light Across a Reading Nook in 5 Steps

Start with the cable path

The Flos String Light comes as either a cone head or a sphere head. Both use a flat textile cable, with one SKU rated to 12 metres and the longer version rated to 22 metres. Before drilling, mark the point where the cable leaves the power supply and the spot where the diffuser should finish. In a corner nook, the supply will often sit near a skirting socket on one wall, while the head needs to land over a chair on the adjacent wall. The cable can cut across the corner diagonally or follow both walls through the supplied cleats.

Measure the diagonal before laying out the guides. A nook 1.8 metres deep and 2.2 metres wide has a corner-to-corner run of about 2.85 metres, which sits well inside the 12 metre cable. The extra cable is part of the design. You can let it drape, loop it back, or pull it taut, and the amount of slack you leave sets the line you see from the room. Around 30 centimetres of sag softens the fixture. Pull it close to straight and the cable reads as a sharp graphic line instead. Decide on that line before the drill comes out, because the anchor positions become permanent once the holes are made.

Fix the guide points into the wall

The fixture uses small cable guides. Each guide carries the textile cable and the diffuser head; the cone version is around 600 grams. That weight is modest, although the cable pulls sideways once it is tensioned, and sideways force is what can strip a plasterboard fixing.

Use a self-drilling metal plasterboard fixing rated to at least 5 kilograms per point, or place the guide into a stud when the run lines up with one. On masonry, a 6 millimetre nylon plug gives the guide screw enough grip with margin to spare.

Keep the distance between guides to about 1.5 metres or less. Longer unsupported spans let the cable swing when a window is open or a door slams, which can move the head away from its intended position above the chair. Mark each guide location with a pencil, check the line with a spirit level or a phone level app, then drill. A misplaced guide leaves a hole roughly the size of a wall plug, so a 30 second level check can prevent filler and repainting later. Drive the screws until each guide sits flush, while leaving enough freedom for the cable to slide during the tensioning stage.

Set the head for the book

Pendant height advice from Muuto places a dining pendant 70 to 85 centimetres above a table surface. A reading nook works from the position of a book held at chest height by a seated reader. For the Flos head, set the bottom of the diffuser roughly 120 to 140 centimetres above the seat cushion.

That range puts the light source above and slightly behind the reader’s shoulder line when the chair faces into the room. The page catches the light from above, and the bright diffuser stays out of the seated sightline.

Sit in the chair with a paperback before fixing the final guide. Look down at the page in the way you actually read. If the lit diffuser appears directly in your view, the head is too low or too far forward.

The same glare problem can happen with an Anglepoise desk lamp set at the wrong angle. The bulb edge slips into peripheral vision, and the eye keeps refocusing instead of settling on the page. Raise the String Light head or move it about 20 centimetres back along the cable until the source disappears from view and the page remains lit.

Choose the head shape before buying. The cone head throws a more directional pool, which suits a single armchair. The sphere scatters wider and can cover a two-seat nook where two people read side by side. The two heads cannot be swapped onto the same cable later.

Where you fix the final guide depends on which head you chose. With a cone, the danger is mounting it too far from the chair, where the directional pool drops short of the book entirely. A sphere fails differently. Set it too low and its wider spread simply floods the eye line with brightness. Small changes on the wall make large differences at cushion height.

Tension the cable in two stages

Thread the cable through every guide from the supply end to the head end before tightening the run. Lift the head to the marked height and hold the slack there. First pull the cable firm enough to remove obvious sag, then go back over each span and even out the line. A single hard pull tends to collect slack at the last guide, leaving one section tight and the next one loose.

The textile cable takes a set after a few days. For a clean horizontal line across the top of the nook, tension it slightly tighter than the finished look you want, because it will relax. For a deliberate catenary droop, leave more slack than feels necessary at first, since some of it will pull out as the head settles. The flat cable profile resists the twisting common with round flex, so the line stays flat against the wall between guides once it has been set.

Plug in and judge the throw after dark

Connect the supply to the wall socket and switch on. The String Light uses an integrated LED in the head, drawing under 20 watts on the cone version, so bulb fitting is absent. Daylight hides the real pool of light; wait until the room is dark, sit in the chair, and read for ten minutes.

Let the nearby surfaces do some work

A reading nook usually includes more than the chair. There may be a floating shelf within reach, a rug under the seat, cushions on the chair, and a wall colour that changes how the fixture feels at night. Each of those surfaces affects the light before you notice the fixture itself.

Check a floating shelf beside the chair for shadow, especially when it sits close to the planned head position. Shelf placement advice often leans on symmetry, but next to a reading light what matters is where the shelf edge falls in relation to the seat. Fix it about 40 centimetres above and behind the chair and it can catch spillover light on its underside, reflecting a soft wash downward that adds fill without a second fixture. Drop the same shelf to the height of the diffuser head or below it, and now it throws a hard line across the chair instead.

Wall tone is just as visible after dark. In a north-facing room, daylight is cool and indirect, so the nook can read grey during the day and become much stronger once the String Light is on. Warm off-white and muted clay tones hold the LED’s colour temperature better than cool grey, which can look flat and dim. The diffuser creates the defined pool, while the wall behind it carries the ambient bounce, leaving the paint to do a large share of the lighting work.

The floor and textiles change the boundary of the nook. A larger flatweave base with a smaller textured rug on top defines the seating zone and keeps one small rug from looking stranded in the middle of the floor. Cushion colours should be tested under the actual fixture. A cushion that looks muted at noon can become saturated under a warm LED, and cool-toned fabrics can shift the other way.

In a small flat, the cable run can also act as a visual divider between the reading corner and the rest of an open-plan room. It marks territory without adding a partition that takes up floor space. That line across the wall can do some of the work a bookcase would otherwise claim.

What the manual leaves out

The Flos instructions cover the electrical connection and the spacing of the guides, and they are built around a straight wall run or a single corner. A nook shaped by a window, a radiator, and a return wall can force choices the diagram never has to show. If the only socket sits behind the chair while the head needs to land in front of it, the cable has to double back, and the surplus that makes the fixture elegant becomes surplus you have to hide.

That doubling back is the part the diagram never has to solve, and it is worth working out on paper before any guide goes into the wall.