Top luxury lighting trends for a brighter home
Top luxury lighting trends for a brighter home
Ann Jackman on the latest trends and tips to transform your home with lighting
TOP IMAGE CREDIT: Decorbuddi Lorraine Sakharet & Ann Jackman, KT1 Photography
Lighting trends are exciting. Lighting transforms living spaces, changing the atmosphere, highlighting features and throwing the rest into darkness at the flick of a switch.
Lighting is one of the most innovative areas of interior design. The continued development of LED technology and search for sustainable materials has inspired a whole generation of designers and resulted in a fabulous flow of new products and ideas. Here are the best of the latest lighting trends:
SCULPTURAL SHAPED CEILING PENDANTS
Designed to stand alone or in clusters, organic shapes and modern finishes such as brass and matt black create a new breed of pendants for ceiling lighting in living spaces. Unlike their more angular, harsh-toned, predecessors these contemporary designs, bring a soft, rounded focal point, creating calm in these challenging times.
Many high street retailers, including West Elm, sell this style of light and most can be connected to dimmers for maximum controllability.
IMAGE CREDIT: Decorbuddi Lorraine Sakharet & Ann Jackman KT1 Photography
LUXURY LIGHTING
Starved of care-free holidays, creating a hotel vibe at home continues to grow in popularity. Sleek, minimalist schemes warrant luxury lighting.
New statement chandeliers are being selected to make an entrance in hallways, hang along the full length of dining tables for evenings of entertaining and create a focal point in beautiful bedrooms to capture the romance of weekends away. Contemporary designs make the most of LED technology to generate circles of light, spun together with delicate metallics. More traditional pieces draw on artisanal skills to inspire designs that merge the concepts of art and lighting.
IMAGE CREDIT: Decorbuddi Ann Jackman
DECORATIVE LAMPS AND SHADES
The tastefully discreet lamp or lampshade is being replaced as we are emboldened to choose stronger colours and patterned shades to generate positive energy in our home spaces. Dramatic geometrics, bold decorative patterns and colourways are taking centre stage. Select table, floor and wall lamps for their individual design characteristics, rather than simply to co-ordinate.
IMAGE CREDIT: Decorbuddi Ann Jackman, KT1 Photography
BACK TO NATURE
Biophilic design is the strongest trend in the world of interiors this decade, connecting us with nature and bringing the outside in. In lighting design, we see natural shapes at the root of so many designs drawing on petal, leaf and landscape motifs. The more intricate designs throw beautiful, dappled, shadows on ceilings and walls, capturing the gentleness of streaks of light breaking through a canopy of leaves. South London-based Tord Boontje creates, stunning, whimsical designs.
IMAGE CREDIT: Porta Romana, Tord Boontje
INTO THE GARDEN
The pandemic-generated lifestyle changes continue and we are loving lighting our outdoor spaces to enjoy the garden in the evenings. Solar lighting has come into its own with new designs to light pathways and garden features. Portable LED table lamps are perfect for impromptu dining outside. String lights and lanterns illuminate and zone areas for entertaining, and provide an opportunity to have some fun reflecting holiday themes from the beach to the Mediterranean and Morocco.
IMAGE CREDIT: Laura Ashley Archer Table Lamp
AESTHETIC ECO-MATERIALS
Most lighting produced today, uses eco-friendly LED strips and bulbs and even halogen downlights can be replaced relatively inexpensively with LED alternatives. Low voltage lighting is becoming the “norm”. Eco-friendly lighting can save money as well as the planet. Rechargeable LED lighting enables atmospheric and functional layers of light to be added. Lights can be positioned high on walls above artwork at mid-height for reading and on the floor to cast dramatic triangles of light over plain walls.
Innovative, young designers are pushing the boundaries with eco-materials that add to the aesthetic as well as eco credentials. Custom lighting designers Spark and Bell, for example, have taken their popular ‘Arc’ pendant design and added beautiful, recycled hard-pressed plastics for a more contemporary style.
IMAGE CREDIT: Spark and Bell
INDUSTRIAL STYLE
As brick slip walls and Crittall doors replace painted plaster and wooden frames, so the trend for industrial-style lighting continues. Always popular, hallmarks of the industrial lighting trend are matt black or antique brass with clear glass shades and filament bulbs. Steel shades in different colours are also used. Staying true to their warehouse origins, the industrial style is an influential element in the move to larger and over-sized lighting.
IMAGE CREDIT: Bonaldo Sofi, Go Modern
