Light it up: the latest home lighting designs are sleek, high-tech and cordless

Marrying aesthetics with technology, the latest home lighting is inventive and show-stopping.
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Dominic Lutyens28 September 2018

Light installations flooding rooms in a spellbinding spectrum of colours, from ultraviolet to sunset orange, were a major attraction at the latest London Design Biennale at Somerset House.

Responding to its theme, Emotional States, designers from more than 40 countries displayed innovative ideas that explored sustainability, social equality and technological advances.

Representing the Netherlands, Marjan van Aubel showed her plant-lined greenhouse, which investigated the future of farming in cities by demonstrating how easily solar glass — in her case in glowing fluorescent pink — can be fitted into our environment.

Flynn Talbot from Australia displayed his enveloping, undulating creation, Full Spectrum, intended to arouse the emotion of love and celebrate the introduction of same-sex marriage in Australia last year: visitors looked like they were plucking heartstrings as they caressed its vertical filaments.

Orion tube and globe lights in polished gold finish by Lee Broom, from £850

As Talbot points out, the introduction of LEDs has rendered clunky hardware obsolete, giving designers freedom to create more elegant, delicate lighting. “Lighting technology is getting more and more compact. Using LEDs and custom electronics, I could design a super-slim, refined structure, so the emphasis is on immersive light effects.”

Looking into the emotional impact of sunsets, London-based Haberdashery Studio’s piece comprised concentric glass arcs refracting multicoloured light. And, as the recent London Design Festival made abundantly clear, experimental lighting is increasingly common in our homes. One company Meystyle, which exhibited at Decorex, makes wallpaper incorporating LED lights forming graphic panels of light.

Other brands reflect this development for marrying aesthetics with technology. Similarly glamorous is Lalique’s Hirondelles lamp masquerading as an Art Nouveau perfume bottle, which is nevertheless state-of-the art for being cordless, and Alexander Joseph’s handblown-glass portable lamps, for indoor and outdoor use, which will light up any space for 52 hours before they need recharging.

Sarah Colson Prism lights for Debenhams, a new addition to the store's Editions collections, from £90

Lee Broom’s Orion light, unusual for combining horizontal illuminated tubes with spheres, is rich for incorporating a polished gold finish, while Artés wall lights in brass and alabaster from CTO Lighting can be mounted individually or grouped — a key trend now is for modular lighting with individual components forming larger clusters to show-stopping effect.

The new low-energy Gople light from Artemide incorporates individually dimmable red, blue and white LEDs, encouraging plants to grow around it thanks to its tech: photosynthetic photon flux density. Jochen Holz’s eccentric, wiggly Neon table light in borosilicate glows intense blue. And Horah lights by Raw Edge for Wonderglass have shades that playfully rotate. Never before has lighting been so versatile and inventive.

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