Stylish Contemporary Lighting Trends
Below, find out which design trends shine the brightest. To illustrate the trends as well as the breadth of the offerings, we’ve included both industrially produced fixtures and one-of-a-kind designs. Some will be available at retail or through an interior designer; others may be purchased from the maker. Let there be light!
1. Ceramic
The popularity of handcrafted and “perfectly imperfect” finishes coincides with a pottery boom in recent seasons.
Connecticut-based studio Dumais Made nods to modernist sculpture with its clean-lined lamps and earthy glazes.
The surface texture of this slab-built stoneware Clark lamp was created with textured rolling pins and rods and accentuated with verdigris glaze. A hand-sewn cotton-string shade complements the base’s hand-built construction.
Coil building is yet another pottery-making technique. Virginia Sin, founder of the Brooklyn, New York-based studio SIN (whose ceramic work has been picked up by major retailers) plays with the form in her Lunar collection.
Matte white stoneware coils encircle the new tabletop version’s base, revolving like the moon around the Earth, Sin says.
2. Portable
Cute cordless portable lights! Many can be brought outside, which is convenient given that indoor-outdoor living is more popular than ever.
The soon-to-be-released Guy by Koncept, for example, is a rechargeable battery-powered LED light that can be used indoors and outdoors. The lantern has at least nine hours at full charge, as well as a charging base that turns it into a table lamp.
The cheerful-looking Verner Panton Flowerpot from &Tradition is among the most recognizable Danish designs from the 1960s. The widely available molded-polycarbonate lamp comes in multiple modern colors and is fitted with an integrated LED and a USB charging cable.
3. Loopy
Freed from the heat and bulkiness of incandescent lightbulbs, integrated LED-powered lights have revolutionized decorative lighting. Now lighting fixtures can be thin, flexible and lightweight...
One such light was this RA wall sconce by D'Arnes, a Canadian design company. What looks like a rope of ambient light is actually an LED tube encapsulated in hand-bent glass. It hangs from a disc available in a variety of finishes, including shiny 12-karat gold.
The Tracer Loop collection from Luke Lamp took loopiness to the extreme with its flexible, illuminated, cordlike lights. They come with predesigned or custom layouts, or you can choose an open-ended version that can wrap around your own existing or custom-fabricated frame (not included), as seen here.
4. Linear
Contrasting with the loopy, organically shaped and playful lighting designs are the sleek tubular and columnar forms, many with customizable configurations.
The T.O pendant by San Francisco studio Pablo Designs, for example, enables users to mix and match different colored suspension belts with skinny light “wands” in a variety of finishes. Shown in a stack of two here, the individual wands can rotate 360 degrees to create ambient or task lighting, depending on your needs.
Canadian brand A-N-D’s Column series features faceted glass cylinders or “modules” that can be combined vertically in modules of one to six or horizontally in modules of three to six. Available as pendants, like those pictured here, or new table or floor lamps, they come in clear or ivory and are available through select U.S. retailers.
5. Folded
Whether folded sharply like an origami crane or gently like a pile of ribbon, folded lighting designs are in!
Designer Olivia Barry, who’s based in New York’s Hudson Valley, folds and drapes ceramic slabs to create minimalist fixtures (like this Illuminated Leaf wall sconce) that emit a soft glow.
Liam H. McClure hand-bends and -folds perforated sheet metal to create his one-of-a-kind table lamps, making the industrial material look as soft and sheer as chiffon. He notes in his product description that the perforations in the overlapping sections create a moire effect that changes depending on where the observer stands.
The Le Klint Bouquet by designer Sinja Svarrer Damkjær (which is distributed in the U.S. by Ameico) has an intricately cross-pleated shade available in paper or PVC. The shades are made by skilled “pleating technicians” at Le Klint’s original pleating studio in Odense, Denmark.
6. Felted
Designs that promote wellness and accessibility are hot right now, and soft, tactile materials are also on-trend. Given that loud spaces are irritating, especially for those with auditory sensitivity, lighting designs that incorporated soft, sound-dampening materials — especially felt — looked both stylish and smart. One could imagine these in a loud workplace or restaurant (their primary market), but they’d work just as well as in an echoey open-concept home.
For example, the customizable Stackabl pendant lights (including this Arcilla collection) are made of upcycled felted merino wool, cast acrylic, post-consumer aluminum and dimmable LED lights.
Sabin Lighting is a Chicago startup that focuses on acoustic lighting for the architectural market. Its colorful collections, including the Quad series pictured here, are made from sewn polyester acoustic panel (PET) felt that incorporates recycled content.
7. Funky
Our final few one-of-a-kind lamps may not make their way to big-box retailers or into your average home. But given how design trends tend to trickle down, echoes of their free-spirited shapes and colors might.
These playful ceramic lamps and forms were made by Shimmer Studio founder Yuxing Zhang, a Chinese-Canadian artist and designer based in Toronto. Each lamp has handmade lumps and bumps that make it unique.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, ceramist Natan Moss made these wheel-thrown Maurice floor lamps and table, which have an intriguing shaggy texture.
Award-winning light by Daniel Shapiro, who builds his sculptural, one-of-a-kind extruded and hand-thrown stoneware pieces in his St. Louis studio.
Shapiro’s 10-bulb chandelier features an illuminated globe at the bottom and nine recessed bulbs housed in 24-karat gold-lustered cups.
Hope this gives you some fresh ideas! Lighting is a great way to change the feel of any room.
Best!
Basya
