This is the second post looking at the decorative lighting trends that emerged at this year’s Euroluce. We’ve already looked at: colour; and new directions in linear lights. This time we investigate:
Ballsonsticks®
Spots on bars
Lines and belts
Dots of light
BALLS ON STICKS
Of course, what these posts about the trends at Euroluce 2023 are showing is what the trends are from the manufacturers—not what the public think are the trends. But it’s the latter that is arguably the more important, because that determines what is actually bought.
So we need to look at balls—ballsonsticks®. Usually white frosted glass balls, there are typically several of them on a single structure, often made of rods. This is where we hit the lighting jargon problem! If we use “pendant” for a single light hanging down, the only word we’ve got left for a pendant with multiple lamps is “chandelier”. But that word conjures up in the mind’s eye a Maria Theresia, not a Lindsey Adelman. However, the aim is the same: in one luminaire, to have several light sources, rather than just one. This means they cast more light, and that light can be directed over a wider area.
They are also more imposing, and they can be long, rather than round. So, from a functional point of view, they occupy a similar space in your quiver as do the linear lights we recently looked at.
Karman Atmosphere
A bit perverse to start with luminaires that have only one ball on, but Karman’s Atmospheres are so beautiful in their simplicity and their proportions, how could I not?
Lumen Center Ring
Equally perverse, because the balls are in a ring rather than on a stick, but sharing the same attributes as Atmosphere:
TossB Bounce
TossB put their balls on horizontal rings.
TossB Bounce Lines
But TossB are not stupid—they do also offer their balls on a stick:
SPOTS ON BARS
This is where decorative lighting meets technical/architectural lighting. The multiple light sources can sometimes be steered in multiple directions, and light a long (rather than a round) surface.
TossB Twins Lines
TossB were pioneers of the spots-on-bars with their attractive Tribes (there is also Tribes Globe now, that has balls instead of spots).
Twins Lines has the spot twins on a bar, as above. But you can have spots on a ring if you specify Twins:
Estiluz Laverd
Estiluz, with their Laverd, also give you the option of having spots on a ring…
…or in a line:
Estiluz Morse
The lights can be twizzled around the bar to point them where you need the light. This is also true of…
AGO Probe Rail Spot
This is part of the Probe family that, via a choice between two little lampshade-shaped light bodies, can either produce spot light or ambient light:
Karman’s Turn It mounts the spots onto bars that can be configured into different shapes for different spaces. For offices, yes…
…but also for residential:
Karman Airtek One
I’ve hear it said that there was nothing new, nothing innovative at Euroluce this year. But, as we’ve been seeing, that’s utter bollocks. For further proof, here is Karman’s Airtek one. Yes, another opportunity to attach a variety of spotlights to a bar. But it is a double bar. And the bar itself contains uplighters!
Like Turn It, there are connectors that enable Airtek One to be arranged into a variety of shapes to create site-specific installations:
Estiluz Cupolina
How to apply an even light over a table top:
LINES and BELTS
So we’ve seen balls on sticks, spots on bars, and a bar with a light in it. At Euroluce there was continuation of another recent trend: the line, or belt, with lights inside or attached. This is an alternative way to have a light source that is not a single point or a cluster.
MARSET Ambrosia
Marset’s Ambrosia takes the established Linestra lamp and provides it with fresh, contemporary structures that allow one…
…or more…
…to be used in a wider variety of locations. (They also avoid the two-wires-and-a-wiggly-power-cable trope which puts UK customers off using linear lights in non-office locations.)
Lumen Center Skylines
Lumen Center’s Skylines family does not use the Linestra. Instead, they continue to use the highest quality LEDs, now in “flower-shaped” Pyrex.
There is quite a family of these “slender threads in the sky that weave geometries”.
As you can see above, besides the line of light, the series also follows our spots-on-bars trend! But Skylines are not just on-trend—they are elegant, minimal, innovative and useful designs (i.e. what you’d hope to find at Euroluce…just saying.)
Karman Leda
Lines and belts do not have to be straight. Flos, (Wireline, Belt) and Bomma (Dew Drops), amongst others, have been advocating belts of light. Karman are doing their bit by creating Leda:
DOTS OF LIGHT
So what happens if you design luminaires that have the multiple light sources (balls, spots) and attach them to something more flexible, less visible. Well, you might get…
Martinelli Luce Multidot
Strings of small lit globes…
…that you can arrange in any which way—a chandelier to go over the dining table, maybe?
Or a cluster to go down a stairwell?
Luceplan Liiu
The dots in Luceplan’s Liiu are a bit bigger, and the structure less visible. There are thin wires kept in tension by weights at their bottom. It is “…a novel system of suspension lamps, light and flexible, based on advanced research conducted by Luceplan on high-performance technical lighting solutions that nevertheless have an ethereal, poetic image”. Echoes of the Arik Levy’s iconic Wireflow? Not really: the lights are running through the structure, rather than just in the weights at the bottom. Basically, in Wireflow it is the structure that matters, whereas in Liiu it is the dots of light that matter. The result is less rigid, less formal, more…dancing?
So there you have four trends that (with the linear lights we looked at in an earlier post) form a meta-trend: contemporary wow-factor designs with multiple light sources, that can be long as well as round—i.e. modern chandeliers.... Or, to put it another way, there are now alternatives to ballsonsticks®!
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 #1: colour, new directions in linear lights
