Lighting

A naked flame may be dangerous in the wrong hands but it can also be beautiful and calming, a giver of heat and light, and the perfect mood setter for a quiet evening in. Candles offer an easy and relatively safe way of experiencing a continuous naked flame, it's just a shame you have to light them and extinguish them, and that they cannot be dimmed as you would an electric light bulb. Or perhaps they can.  Read More

We live in an age where people in the developed world are so dependent on electricity that if it wasn't available a whole civilization would collapse in a week. It’s therefore ironic that 1.32 billion people around the world are still without what most people have come to see as a basic necessity. To mark its 100th anniversary, the Panasonic Corporation plans to distribute 100,000 solar lanterns that the company has developed that can not only provide light, but also charge mobile phones and other small devices.  Read More

Whatever your tipple of choice is, from water and pop to whiskey and rum, they all come in bottles, though the aesthetic appeal of these bottles differs greatly depending on the brand. The Satechi Touch USB LED Lamp gives new life to these empty bottles by turning them into a base for a table lamp.  Read More

There aren't enough stop motion animation films starring light fittings, in my opinion. Until today, I only knew of one: Luxo Jr, by Pixar. Hyperion is the second, and it stars the eponymous insectoid light fitting, designed by Paul Heijnen.  Read More

Here's an interesting piece of interior design. Challenged by a client to refurbish a tiny studio apartment in Paris, architect Betillon/Dorval‐Bory was asked to pay special attention to lighting due to the limited daylight available in some parts of the apartment. Its response was unusual, to say the least. High-performance lighting was installed at one end and, in one sense, deliberately awful lighting at the other. Named Appartement Spectral, the design breaks every rule in the book, yet the effect is striking – and it's all down to street lighting.  Read More

In late March, all of the US Home Depot stores began carrying Cree’s new LED light bulbs. While they’re by no means the first such bulbs to offer the same form factor as standard incandescent bulbs, their combination of a relatively low price and visually-pleasing light quality have got some people – and not just publicists working for Cree – saying that they could be what finally brings LED light bulbs into the mainstream. I recently got a chance to try one out for myself, and I definitely liked what I saw.  Read More

For astronomers, a well-lit city means a sky unavailable for study. Worse, light pollution is blamed for affecting bird migration, sea turtle hatching, and wildlife mating and feeding routines. Researchers at National Central University, Taiwan, and Unidad Academica de Fisica, Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, have attacked the problem with a new LED street lamp designed to shine only where needed, without splashing into unwanted areas, as a way to reduce light pollution while providing better lighting.  Read More

The latest LED lighting product to hit Kickstarter, Klauf Light Bars are semi-portable, low-cost LED strips which can be connected end-to-end more or less straight out of the box. They come in 6-inch and 12-inch (15 and 30 cm) lengths, which can be arranged as you like up to a length of 15 feet (or about 4.5 meters). They can either be slotted together directly or connected with cables, which is handy if you intend to install them under kitchen cabinets which extend around a corner (recommended), or make giant illuminating nunchaku (less so).  Read More

Back-to-back announcements from Green Ray LED and Philips show signs that there is now clear water between LED lights and fluorescent lights so far as energy efficiency is concerned. The proverbial glow of commercially available lights with 200 lumens per watt efficiency can now be clearly seen radiating over the horizon.  Read More