This post is the first of three that look at the trends which emerged at Euroluce 2023. Two more will follow. So there’s a lot to read. But they are jolly interesting and are mostly pictures of fine lights, so they’ll make super holiday reading!
They are also very important because they show us the direction in which decorative lighting will be moving over the next two years. And that matters because, given a typical timescale, what you specify now won’t be installed for a year or two. You don’t want your lighting to look dated even before the project is finished.
The trends I identify are:
Colour
Linear lights: new directions
Ballsonsticks®
Spots on bars
Lines and belts
Dots of light
Softness
This post looks at Colour and new concepts in Linear Lights.
COLOUR
Euroluce in Milan is far and away the most important, and most international, decorative lighting event, so it is the best place to spot trends—even more so this year because, though it normally takes place every other year, the one this April was the first since 2019.
Having shown you my top picks in a previous post, my analyses here will identify those trends, starting with COLOUR!!! I’m going to let the pictures do the talking—I get into less trouble this way….
BRIGHT COLOUR
Sometimes a single bright colour, at other times several incorporated into one luminaire. Always sensitively chosen—we are not talking tan shoes with pink shoelaces.
Of course, colour means, inter alia, playful, so…hooray for colour!
Aldo Bernardi Lapis
They are actually ceramic. The light is in the tip.
There is another, similarly colourful, design based on brushes.
Anna told me that they were doing such colours 30 years ago! Now is the time to bring them back.
Roger Pradier Plémo
Plémo is a very simple, very useful outdoor wall light. There are two versions: light down only; and light up and down.
What marks it out is that the panel running across the front and around the sides is attached by magnets and can be in any of fourteen standard colours! And other colours on request!!
Atelier Areti Parallel Tubes
Santa & Cole M64
Santa & Cole worked with the Spanish colourist Claudia Valsells to select eight colours for Miguel Milá’s iconic M64 from 1962.
Flos 265 Chromatica 1
Flos has introduced a polychrome version of Paolo Rizzatto’s 1972 design 265 in both sizes.
Martinelli Luce Lady Galala
The three different-sized reflectors come in four colours. You choose how to arrange them.
There is an outdoor version!
FontanaArte Thalea
Not dissimilar in how it is composed from several diffusers (in glass or aluminium) of different shapes and colours is FontanaArte’s Thalea. They are mounted on a structure that incorporates a light source that is tubular, so the light can pass through more than one diffuser at once:
There were examples at Euroluce that had more intense colours:
Penta Gems
A less intensely coloured version of the same idea is Penta’s Gems:
Venini
Of course, Venini—being from Murano, and being Venini—showed glass with lots of colour:
But you won’t find them on their web site yet….
Studio Marco Piva’s aptly named Alieno for them is cordless:
Catellani & Smith Ensö
Wow, Enzo! A glorious, sweeping flourish of a brush stroke…
…in his signature blue (so close to Yves Klein’s). Which can look like a deep black, depending upon the light in the space:
“I had the privilege to spend a period of my life in Japan. During that time, I took calligraphy classes, and it was life-changing. I still practice this art, trying to find essence of those slow, precise movements. For example, Ensō, the circle symbol of enlightenment and wholeness, has always fascinated me. It encompasses everything and nothing. At that point, adding three-dimensionality to that stroke was natural for me”. Enzo Catellani.
Other examples of the use of colour by Catellani & Smith, plus others, are in my post from last June on trends here. And my post a year earlier just about colour is here. Read both of those and you’ll get a fuller picture of just how much is being offered by top decorative lighting to those who relish colour (and emotion, and joy….).
NEW CONCEPTS IN LINEAR LIGHTS
This year we saw significant attention being paid to linear, horizontal pendants, many breaking new ground. As a typology, they are obviously not new—they are most commonly seen in workplace settings (offices, workshops, schools, hospitals...). But there are many hospitality and residential locations where they could be really useful—over any rectangular table, really.
Many brands have therefore addressed how linear lights could fit into more environments, not just by what they look like, but also by how they cast light. We are a long way from the single fluorescent tube!
The developments shown at this year’s Euroluce are therefore not only interesting in themselves, they are also relevant to those of your projects, including office interiors, wherever a softer, more calming style is being sought.
So what new ground is being broken? The first is:
REFLEXION
…which ensures a shadow-free ambient light.
Santa & Cole
In 2018, the great Antonio Arola designed for Santa & Cole Lámina 45/85. A thin metal bar contains LED strip that shines up onto a reflective surface to cast light when mounted low down to light a table…
… or from higher up to light a space:
A version with a bigger reflective surface—Lámina Mayor—was introduced in the same year:
They say it is a “balance between poetry and reason”. Whatever. It is nevertheless a slim, elegant, effective, slightly surprising design.
A variation on the theme—more is made of the reflective surface itself—and also new for 2023, is Lámina Dorada 45
It comes in other typologies as well; wall, floor and table, resulting a section of their Euroluce 2023 stand being a celebration of the reflexion concept::
Bover Alouet
Emiliana Design for Bover obviously thought that this was a whizz bang idea, that was relevant to their aim to provide the functionality found in the linear light used in offices in a luminaire which would be warmer, softer. They’d do this by using wood, thus making Alouet equally at home in a contemporary, post-COVID office that strives to be more “domestic”, as it would be over a bar or a dining table. (And again, no glare!)
Estiluz Gada
For Gada, Estiluz use the back of the reflector (the light from which is supplemented by some direct light) to introduce a range of finishes. White looks good in an office:
But there are also wood, marble and concrete options.
The detailing is good:
MULTIPLES
So, as some brands were extending their linear pendant offers by adding reflexion, other decided to use multiples of linear lights in one combined luminaire. Since most linear lights cast their light through one section of a tube, by rotating a tube, and by having more than one tube, light can be pointed downwards, upwards and sidewards from one luminaire. You’ll see what I mean.
Marset Fris
Fris is suspended within loops (as are some of the other introductions below) so that it can be rotated at will to become an uplighter or a downlighter. Two can be hung together (making an up and a down):
Axo Light Paralela
A single horizontal light can be combined with others:
Pablo T.O Pendant
Like Paralela, Pablo’s T.O Pendant can also be suspended from belts…
… and, again, several can be suspended together:
Davide Groppi
Here is Davide Groppi also hanging one horizontal bar under another, again demonstrating that one can point upwards (or back at the wall) while the other points downwards.
TUBES
People like Davide Groppi have made linear lights slimmer and slimmer until they hardly exist at all. Therefore inspiring brands are taking this typology in the opposite direction. They are creating designs that are more substantial, more tube-like rather than stick-like. Sandro at LZF was a pioneer. Now others are joining in—particularly glass specialists.
Barovier & Toso Opéra
The grand old lady of Murano glass is showing again an awareness of what is happening on the mainland:
Opéra comes in a choice of fourteen colours besides clear—and also works in multiples!
Flos Luce Orizzontale
The Bouroullec brothers have designed Luce Orizzontale for Flos.
It is a clean design, suspended by three slim cables (which matters to UK clients, who do not want to see two suspension wires plus a wiggly power cable). A polished aluminium bar runs through the centre of thick glass tube sections that have a textured finish (a bit like Bocci's 14).
What is not obvious from a picture is that, like the multiple horizontal lights above, it has two LED light sources in the one fitting, one pointing upwards and one pointing downwards. They can be independently controlled, by DALI or by touching a button on the end of the luminaire.
Brokis Overlay
Overlay is another interesting design technically that also exploits characteristics of glass (as you would hope glass specialists Brokis would do). Concentric glass tubes are held by a structure made of concrete that has shards of upcycled glass embedded in it.
There are various versions and typologies…
…so we would expect this collection to be expanded. By having the different layers of glass, more visual heft is added to a linear pendant.
DCWÉditions NL12
Whereas DCWÉditions’ NL12 adds thickness by bundling several tubes together.
Now I know what you are thinking. ”That’s just an Org without the bits on the end” (and it is the same designer, Sebastian Summa). But no! It is another of the unexpected, clever designs launched at this year’s Euroluce. Because only one of the twelve tubes is lit! “...the other tubes relaying its diffusion by refraction and prism.”
One consequence is that the tubes can be held loosely enough to allow them to be slid horizontally, so you could neatly line up all the ends, for example (as a tiny video on the web page shows).
SO...
This major trend—moving the suspended linear light from a fluorescent tube in a batten, to something that can be used in lots of decorative environments—has resulted in designers and technicians from several key brands thinking anew about: how their light is best cast over a rectangular table or desk; what the luminaire itself is made of and looks like; and even what they are suspended from. This is a really useful addition to your quiver of decorative lighting!
Click the titles below for the other posts about Euroluce 2023 and the trends that will affect decorative lighting for the next few years.
Euroluce 2023 trends #2: balls on sticks, spots on bars, lines & belts, dots of light
