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The difference between a passable home makeover and the best interior design possible is a focus on the small details and ensuring that even the little parts of your room that are usually determined by necessity rather than choice look as good as possible.
This is where our range of beautiful electrical sockets comes in, available in a wide range of materials, finishes and functionality, with a growing number of them not only featuring a socket for conventional British plugs but also one that you can plug USB devices directly into.
However, what is perhaps more subtly unusual than the convenience of a plug socket with USB support is the three-pin BS 1363 socket itself, which is very different from the two-pin European and different two-pin United States sockets many travelling through London are used to.
Why three pins? Part of it is a question of design optimisation, part of it a matter of safety, but the initial impetus was out of wartime necessity.
One of the big reasons why a three-pin plug is a good idea is that it is designed with safety in mind, which manifests in several parts of the design.
British plugs have to be bigger than ones in other countries because they feature a built-in fuse rather than connecting to a larger fusebox, an innovation largely implemented to save on copper during the massive rebuild of homes following the Second World War.
The three pins also meant that alongside the two live wires, a plug would also connect to an earth wire, which protects you in the event that the metal casing of an appliance you use becomes live.
Alongside this, Britain became one of the first countries to make shutters on plug sockets mandatory, meaning that the larger earth pin needs to be pushed into the plug first to open the shutters for the two live pins, significantly reducing the chance of touching a live wire and being electrocuted.
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