Cupcakes and Cashmere Floor Lamps Recalled: What to Check on Yours

A recall notice went up on October 1, 2026 for a floor lamp a lot of people bought on a quick errand run. Most of them cannot remember the brand, because nobody memorizes the brand of a lamp they grabbed on sale.

If that sounds like a lamp in your living room, you need three facts fast: which lamp it is, how to tell if yours is one of them, and what to do next.

This article covers all three. It also walks through a short safety check you can run on every other plug-in lamp in the house, which matters more than usual right now on the Monterey Peninsula.

What the Cupcakes and Cashmere Floor Lamp Recall Covers

The Consumer Product Safety Commission listed a recall on three-light floor lamps sold under the Cupcakes and Cashmere brand, made by Designs Direct. About 4,200 units are involved.

The lamps sold at HomeGoods stores nationwide from June 2025 through July 2026. The stated hazard is that the cord or the internal wiring can smoke, melt, spark, overheat or catch fire when the lamp is plugged in or switched on. There have been roughly 11 reported incidents.

Most people who own one have no idea. Here is where the brand name actually shows up on a floor lamp:

• The socket cluster. Look at the metal housing where the three sockets meet the pole. Manufacturer labels are usually a small foil or paper sticker there.
• The cord tag near the plug. A small plastic or paper tag a few inches up from the plug carries the brand, the wattage rating, and the safety listing mark.
• The underside of the base. Some lamps put the label here instead.
• The box or the receipt, if you kept either one.

If it is a match, stop using the lamp and unplug it. Then follow the remedy listed on the CPSC recall page, which is the page that stays current if the remedy changes.

Do not cut the plug off and leave the lamp in the garage for parts. A recalled lamp with a known wiring fault is not a project piece.

Why This Recall Landed at the Worst Time of Year Here

Floor lamps on the Peninsula go from occasional to all-evening the week the clocks change. Daylight saving time ended November 1. December is the darkest month locally, with an average of 9 hours and 42 minutes of daylight and sunset at 4:51 pm on December 1.

From early November through late February, the hours a room runs on fixtures instead of windows roughly doubles. That is the whole story with a wiring fault. A lamp running five hours a night in January is under far more load than the same lamp running twenty minutes on a July evening.

The effect is bigger in older Pacific Grove and Carmel cottages, where plenty of rooms have no ceiling box at all. In those houses, plug-in lamps are not accent pieces. They are the lighting.

So this is the season to look at your cords, not next spring.

The Five Minute Lamp Cord Check

Six things to look for on any plug-in lamp, recalled or not. None of it requires tools.

Run the Same Check on Every Lamp in the House

Most people own at least one lamp with no brand name and no paperwork. One of the more common questions the Pacific Grove showroom gets is a short one: “Do you do lamp repairs?” It usually comes from someone holding a piece they love and do not want to throw out.

Another local homeowner in her seventies wrote in about a floor lamp she inherited from her grandmother in law. She wanted a new shade. She had no idea how old the wiring underneath it was.

Orphaned lamps are normal here. Run the check anyway:

• A cord that is warm along its length, not just slightly warm at the plug, points at the conductor rather than the connection.
• Brittle or cloth-wrapped insulation on anything pre-1960s. Cloth cord crumbles with age and heat.
• A plug that wobbles in the outlet, which can arc.
• Scorching or browning inside the socket, visible once the bulb is out.
• A bulb rated higher than the socket, which is one of the easiest fixes and one of the most common problems.
• No UL or ETL mark on anything bought in the last several years.

Switching to LED bulbs lowers the heat load on an old socket considerably. That helps, but it does not repair aging wire.

Which Lamps Are Worth Rewiring and Which Are Not

The honest test is whether the base is worth the labor. Rewiring a lamp is not expensive relative to a replacement in most cases, but costs vary by shop and by how the lamp comes apart, so get a real quote before you decide.

A lamp worth saving usually has a solid metal, cast, ceramic or turned wood body, a hollow center the cord can be pulled through, and a socket that unscrews and accepts a standard replacement. Plenty of mid-century pieces and antique floor lamps qualify.

A lamp not worth saving usually has a hollow resin or pressed-composite body with the wiring molded in. There is no way to open it without destroying it.

Rewiring is work for a licensed electrician or a lamp repair specialist. Sentimental value is not a reason to try it yourself. Shades, finials, harps and some fixture parts can often be sourced locally, which is covered in this guide on replacing a lamp shade on a lamp you actually care about. The wiring itself belongs with your electrician.

Rewire It or Replace It

A quick way to sort the lamps in your house before you call anyone.

Photograph the Label Before You Need It

The reason recalls are so hard for normal people is simple. Six months after buying a lamp, almost nobody can say who made it.

It shows up constantly. One customer called years later asking for a copy of a receipt for a fixture bought in 2019. Another had lost the remote for a ceiling fan and could no longer remember the brand, which made finding a replacement a guessing game.

The fix takes ten seconds. When a new lamp or fixture comes into the house, photograph the label on the socket or cord tag and drop that photo in a folder with the receipt.

Where you bought it matters too. An anonymous online or big-box purchase leaves no trail, while a showroom with manufacturer records can usually tell you the brand, model and purchase date years later. That same gap showed up in the Hampton Bay Halwin ceiling fan recall, where owners struggled to confirm what they owned.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Cupcakes and Cashmere Floor Lamp Recall