5 Trends From Lightovation Specifiers Should Know About
For the residential lighting sector, the Lightovation show – held in January and June at the Dallas Market Center – is the bellwether for styles driving the consumer market. This year more manufacturers presented cross-over products for the architectural/office market due to requests from lighting showrooms expanding into the category.
Here are the key trends that stood out at the show:
1. Outdoor Lighting Gets an Upgrade
No matter which manufacturer you visited at Lightovation, if they offered exterior lighting, you’d have noticed the scale for residential outdoor fixtures keeps getting larger (front entry fixtures reaching 6 feet high) and incorporated luxury materials such marble, alabaster, and travertine.
The term “Dark Sky-friendly” was also mentioned frequently, although in each instance it was pointed out the fixtures are not officially Dark Sky-certified (the cost of certification being the primary reason).
Marine-grade finishes – once only available on a few select styles from a manufacturer, if at all – is now more widely available on multiple collections and usually covered by a 5-year warranty.
2. Playing Up Form
Gone are the days when offering LED fixtures meant swapping out incandescent lamps for similarly shaped LED versions. Manufacturers have gotten to the point where instead of producing fixtures in customary shapes, they are utilizing the unique properties of LED (i.e. chiefly the small form factor) to create lighting fixtures that, well, don’t look like the typical lighting fixtures we grew up with. This movement has led to excitement among specifiers and buyers to offer fresh looks not typically found in the mainstream.
3. Using Unique Materials
Using glass as a design medium might not seem remarkable for lighting, however, at the January edition of Lightovation, fixtures in all price categories featured glass techniques beyond the typical clear and opaque. Glass with random cloud swirl patterns and crystal in bold chunky sizes were just some of the standouts.
There were also a noticeable presence of upscale mediums – such as alabaster, porcelain, bone china, and marble – among the new designs at the show.
4. Applying Ingenuity
At Hubbardton Forge, the SNAPS collection created by Andy Morter on the company’s design team, is truly unlike anything in the market as ceiling fixtures, floor lamps, and sconces can all be uniquely configured by the user. Leather straps (with concealed wires) with 2-sided alabaster spheres lit with LED can literally be “snapped” together to form a variety of shapes and dimensions.
Allegri Crystal debuted a pendant chandelier with inner rings that can be positioned in a variety of ways and in different color temperatures within the same fixture for a customizable solution in commercial and residential installations.
5. New Entry in Smart Home
Within its massive new multi-line showroom, WAC Group debuted its WAC Home division, which aims to make consumers more comfortable with the concept of circadian lighting. The WAC Home System utilizes technologies such as tunable white and dim-to-warm lighting (operated by a wall-mount panel or by smartphone app) to simulate natural lighting throughout the day in real time.
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