In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been a revival of all things 1970s lately—lighting by Venini, photography by Willy Rizzo, furniture by Pierre Cardin and Guy de Rougemont. Fashion has been dipping into the disco era for quite some time, and last year Sirius XM launched Studio 54 Radio, a 24/7 extravaganza channeling the throbbing beat that defined that hedonistic decade. Even Dallas, the seminal late-70s drama, has been reincarnated for a new generation. Still, there are limits to this period craze.

Nobody is clamoring for beanbag chairs, are they? (If you are, Zanotta, the Italian furniture company, still makes its classic Sacco.) And I can’t think of the last time anybody mentioned the allure of uplights, which were actually invented in 1949 by Harry Gitlin, a Manhattan lighting designer. Nothing says ’70s to me like warm light mysteriously emerging from behind a table, cabinet, or potted plant.

Interior designer Barbara D’Arcy—the genius behind the wildly influential home-furnishings department of Bloomingdale’s Manhattan flagship from 1958 until ‘73—was smitten with uplights, by definition small, lightweight, and typically inexpensive. Square or cylindrical, they are about the size of a coffee can, contain a light bulb, and sit directly on a flat surface, usually a floor. As D’Arcy enthused in Bloomingdale’s Book of Home Decorating (Harper & Row, 1973), “In recent years I have become more and more excited by the kind of room that has few or no lamps, a room illuminated by downlights and uplights.” She added, with special emphasis, “Particularly uplights.”

The point wasn’t to provide enough light to read by; instead, observed D’Arcy, who died in May, the goal was “general illumination.” Make that “creating a mood”—usually a come-hither one, such as the nightclub glow that gently suffused the Paris apartment of French interior designer François Catroux and his lean, lanky, American-Brazilian bride, Betty, the main muse of Yves Saint Laurent.

Located in a 17th-century mansion on Île Saint-Louis, the Catrouxes’ living room was the sexiest salon of an era known for thrillingly louche settings. It was a black-and-white fantasia (American Vogue called it a “1970 space capsule”), expertly accented with African antiquities, Op Art paintings by Victor Vasarely, and a monumental chimneypiece composed of a couple of sheets of brushed aluminum. Downlights clung to the corners of the boldly coffered ceiling, but the uplights came into play in an L-shape modular seating unit that resembled a space-age descendant of a Victorian borne. Cushioned expanses wrapped around two sides of a large, square, white-lacquer planter containing two giant dracaenas, and concealed within the planter’s cavity uplights shot rays through the leaves and cast splintered shadows overhead.

Given that kind of instant drama and the uplight’s astonishingly broad acceptance in the design community—would you believe that Mario Buatta, the Prince of Chintz, was and remains a firm adherent, as is fashion designer Valentino Garavani?—it stands to reason that the fixtures showed up in interiors published by Architectural Digest over the years. As designer Tom O’Toole stated in the pages of New York in 1985, commenting on his preferred brand of uplight, “You’ve never seen a place in Architectural Digest that didn’t have one of these in every corner.” An exaggeration obviously, but I took O’Toole’s words as a research challenge. After spending an hour perusing the AD archive, I discovered that between 1970 and 1990 the magazine published scores of interiors thusly outfitted, from Larry Laslo’s sensual Manhattan living room (uplights raked the purple-lacquer boiserie to high-relief perfection) to Diana Phipps’s girlish London bedroom (uplights were hidden behind the pink-plaid canopy bed).

Surely some of those uplights were brought to the shoot by the photographer to help brighten a determinedly dark corner, but others, evidently, were components of the mise-en-scène, materially enriching an otherwise spare environment. Though he is not a fan of uplights per se, finding them more commercial than residential in feeling, Lee F. Mindel of the AD100 architecture firm Shelton, Mindel & Associates does see their value. “Where the shell is neutral,” he says, “an uplight shining through a palm tree or fiddle-leaf ficus can animate a space generally in need of more bold architectural statements.” So if you live in a boxy space sans ennobling moldings or other three-dimensional grace notes, an uplight trained into a big plant could be your salvation. Whether you turn the dial to Sirius XM’s Studio 54 channel for an aural complement, however, is entirely your decision.

WHERE TO FIND THEM

Lexstar makes the classic square canister uplight in four standard finishes (black, white, ivory, and satin aluminum) and four standard sizes ranging from three to six inches in width. All are equipped with integral diffusers, and retail prices start at around $60 for the three-inch model. Custom sizes and colors are also available. For store information, call Lexstar at 845-947-1415.

Pro Track offers modestly priced uplights, usually between $15 and $35 each. Available in various finishes and mostly cylindrical, they can be found at online vendors such as Lamps Plus and Amazon.