Not all that is new in lighting is much better.
One of the newest trends in architectural and residential lighting is tubes of light about 1” in diameter.
When I started my career a rather good number of years ago, we called these T8 Fluorescent Tubes, and they were universally loathed for their institutional feel. It appears that, similar to the periodic return of bellbottom pants, the fluorescent tube is back in vogue. Of course we power the tube with LEDs, but a tube is…a tube?
Before you label me a curmudgeon who fights change, please note that I am all in on LEDs, advocate for forward-thinking technologies like digital lighting, and push for lighting that supports human wellness at minimal cost to the planet and our wallets. I think of myself as very open to change. But not all change is good.
It would be fun to strap rockets to roller skates, at least for a short time. Yes, Youtubers have done it, but that does not make it a good idea.
LEDs are inherently smaller sources of light than anything we have used previously, and that means we can put them just about anywhere in nearly limitless configurations. You can get LEDs in your earrings, or to drop into floral arrangements so the water changes color. You can arrange LEDs in a tube and wrap it around a column or inside a spotlight the size of a few nickels.
This is awesome for lighting geeks like me because it opens up possibilities for creativity. But just because we can….
One of the more popular pendants over kitchen islands in modern homes is more-or-less a stick, often made as narrow as possible. If you squint your eyes a bit, it strongly resembles an old-school fluorescent tube in a very long and narrow box. Is that progress?
I love the aesthetic look of these fixtures in minimalist décor. They can be fashioned out of beautiful metals or wrapped in wood. They are usually suspended on very thin cables and the entire assembly is about as minimal as possible. I love the look.
Just don’t turn them on.
It strikes me that the progress in lighting could be – with only a slight satirical flavor – described as circular.
The bare fluorescent tube of yesterday was harsh on our eyes, so we spread it out by putting them in 2’ x 4’ “troffer” fixtures with lenses and used them in every school, office, and hospital we could find.
LEDs came around and what do we put in those schools now? 2’ x 4’ panels that, from a distance, are virtually identical to fluorescent (even down to the flicker sometimes).
Then we figured out how to make LEDs into tubes. Hey, haven’t we been here before?
So what’s the problem? Let’s say you need 5000 lumens to light up your kitchen or office (lighting is way more complicated than that, but stick with me for a minute). If you spread those 5000 lumens out over a large 2’ x 4’ surface, they will rain down softly into the room. If you squeeze those 5000 lumens out of a smaller square, the fixture will cause significanly more glare in your eyes.
Smaller, in other words, is not always better. When it comes to glare, spreading the light out over the largest surface area possible is arguably far superior.
A few weeks ago I was touring the beautiful new showrooms of WAC Lighting, Shonbeck, and Modern Forms at the Dallas Market Center and noticed a slight shift in design for new fixtures- and a good one.
TIDAL is a fixture that makes use of the flexibility inherent in LEDs to twist three strips of light together in a beautiful flowing form. This is not a brand-new concept; the twisting LED chandelier is quite popular and I have two pendants hanging in my office along the same lines.
What makes TIDAL distinctly different is the width of the strips of light. Instead of pushing them as small as possible, the designers of TIDAL doubled the surface area. In an era where smaller is believed to be better, they went larger.
The result is a pendant that could only exist in the LED era but is also much more comfortable than its immediate neighbors. The same amount of light, spread over twice the area, cuts glare roughly in half.
Well done, Modern Forms. TIDAL is something we need more of in fixture design. Let’s break the feedback loop and get to something better.