Once you recognise this as the norm the whole situation doesn't sound quite so bizarre.
@Helloall - don't do anything about ceiling light fittings until you've checked the sockets - see this thread among others for more details.
This is, of course, the 'normal' solution, but it's quite likely that many non-Swiss don't realise that on many of the 3-way sockets around the rooms one of the three is connected to a light switch. Hence the "appropriate" socket.
I'll echo all the other responses here: in CH it's VERY common that many rooms are lit by floor lamps, controlled via a light switch by the door. You'll get used to it. Most of us did.
I just remembered the first house I had with this switch, my pc was attached to that plug of course.
You just walk by the switch, you click it because you think you are going to shut the light..
Pc goes puff and I was WTF?
The only rooms we have with no ceiling lamps are the bathrooms.
And no sockets controlled by switches.
Tom
I assumed the new OP had read the thread.
Oh, perhaps it's a German-speaking preference?
But you still could mount ceiling lamps? Or do you mean you have no outlets in the ceiling? That is rather strange and unusual.
Not at all. It's actually quite common. In our chalet apartments there are quite few bedrooms with no ceiling light fittings, and many of the ones that are there have clearly been retrofitted, with visible wiring sometimes right the way to the switch, sometimes boxed in on the wall, but in only a few cases actually properly built-in to ceiling and wall.
This.
Tom
Same here - none of our upstairs rooms have originally built in ceiling wiring, only switches and split sockets.
I much prefer the Swiss "bring your own lighting" rather than the German "bring your own Kitchen".
Most of our rooms do have built-in ceiling wiring, but the living room (the largest room in the house, measuring a good 7x7 meters) doesn't, which sort of forces us to illuminate the entire room from a side (also due to us not having carpets and not wanting to run a cable on the floor).
The issue in our new house is the previous owners clearly wanted to have all options. There are ceiling lights, wall lights and sockets controlled by wall switches but most of the sockets aren't marked.
Still not finished installing the lights but I have to say that in our search for new lighting the selection of standing lights was quite good. So I'm not certain I would make the investment in a rental property getting connections installed for central lighting when standing lights are so readily available.
Of course if you have young children standing lights can be problematic unless the base is quite heavy.
In the cellar where they added extra power outlets they are not built into the wall, probably because they didn't want to drill into the concrete to recess them. The wires are concealed in cable tracks. That would be a solution in a rental property, though maybe not the most attractive, but functional.
Not to my knowledge.
It may be a new thing. The new-ish bulb types enable lighting styles that may have been outright impossible a couple decades ago.
Used to be, you'd light the entire room more or less evenly, often with a central light source (maybe two). Can't have lamps standing in the middle of the room so it/they would be hung from the ceiling. Nowadays however it's increasingly common to have lit small-ish areas alternating with less-lit ones, which is more pleasing for the eye; that tends to require a multitude of small lights instead of a single big one. Also, rooms tend to be made bigger over time.
So you may see this in new-ish builds, mostly, or in fully-renovated ones.
Likewise windows and the size of glass panes, what's possible today may have been either impossible, or far too expensive for everday apartments.