Its November 2025, and I am walking up from Angel underground station towards the UK’s largest and, some would say, most successful lighting show, located at the BDC. Unlike the weather of the past few years its overcast, utterly Baltic, and I am pretty sure it snowed this morning. So I find myself wondering if this will affect the numbers attending. As I pass the mobile iGuzzini showroom that sits outside the show I do wonder how they get anyone to volunteer; maybe the salesmen must draw short straws? I mean, it’s one thing to walk in the cold from the station, and completely another to have to stay outside in a converted shipping container for eight or nine hours. I hope they paid you double bubble!
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Auralis Lighting
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I noticed these pendant fittings first, as I walked through the exhibition, but then, after speaking to Alessandro Nisi of anconcepts, the track also caught my attention. It has an integrated LED, and I wanted to find out more!
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‘My name is Alessandro and I am the agent for Penta, which is part of the Auralis group. The pendant you can see here is called ‘Misty Texture’, and it’s made from borosilicate glass. The glass is a type often used in the chemical industry, due to the fact it’s hard to scratch or break ; the material is super strong. This glass sits on top of an aluminium product which has a removable optical head, which is replaceable when the lamp reaches end of life.
The product comes as part of a family with different finishes; there is a transparent option or metallized. The product you see has texturized glass which gives it an industrial look.
The new version of the Stream System track is different to that which you normally see, as it has an internal LED strip that runs throughout, with a 24v driver for the strip, and a 48V driver for the track itself.’
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I think the track with an internal LED is a great idea, giving you a little ambient light to add to your visual scene, it also saves your client the cost of additional downlights, reducing the overall install costs, and chance of an installing contrator somehow messing that part up !
David Groppi
I have always been a fan of Davide Groppi, so please excuse my design lust for this manufacturer! Laura Ronchini export area manager, put up with my Engitalian for at least 5 minutes before I conducted the interview, so thanks for your time and patience.
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‘Set is a floor lamp with a fixed stem of about 2.3m which can fit different spots that are all movable and adjustable. There are a number of different accessories that can enlarge or reduce the beam angles and reduce the flux of the light. The design aesthetic is inspired by the lighting used on a film or photography set. It also comes with a reflector that provides an indirect light, creating uniform illumination, less shadows. From this one stem you can produce many different effects. All accessories are magnetic, and the wire uses a system that keeps the tension taught so the wire doesn’t flap around. The thin straight wire forms part of the aesthetic.’
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Lumina Italia
In the world of decorative lighting, most designs appear either similar to or variations of a previous creation, so when you see something quite different, it naturally piques your interest. The Aether from Lumina Italia was released at this year’s Euroluce, but this was the first time I had seen it in the flesh, and I liked what I saw. Maurizio Serra, sales director at Lumina Italia told me a bit about the product.
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‘Aether is a special product designed by a group of Japanese Architects called Aatismo. It’s made of blown borosilicate glass which is great in terms of refracting and reflecting light and creates volumes inside the shade. The inner petal comes in different colours and is made of Japanese Organza
*nb: Organza is a high-quality, finely woven, and often crystal-finished fabric originating from Japan, prized for its durability, softness, and structure’.
All products from Lumina can be disassembled and parts changed, with the internal ‘petal’ available in 5 different colours. Interestingly the light produced by the product is white when passing through the internal ‘petal’ regardless of its colour, but reflection is coloured.
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XAL
XAL are known in the industry for their high-quality lighting solutions, and for this years LiGHT 25 the product that caught my eye was a new suspended linear product called Enviva. UK managing director Paul Welbon kindly gave his time to explain about this product, so thank you Paul, for a great explanation and for looking like a heavy metal pop icon from Black Sabbath or the like. If you had pulled out a Stratocaster and sang about the product it wouldn’t have surprised me; most refreshing and you made my day!
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‘On the stand we are displaying our new product ‘Enviva’. Its super slim at only 15mm thick, UGR 19 compliant and delivers a couple of thousand lumens per metre. The idea with ‘Eviva’ is that it is going to be the first product from XAL which has cradle-to-cradle certification so that every part of the luminaire can be recycled. There are no glues, screws and no fixings that can’t be recycled, and this is the first kind of product we have ever created in this way. It’s finished in the standard raw aluminium, again the most recyclable variant, but it can be delivered in other painted finishes if necessary. We can fit it with a sensor internally for daylight and passive control. Everyone is talking about living sustainably, we are doing it, not greenwashing, by making products that are, what they are’.
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Folio
Folio came to the show with their special take on a stretched fabric ceiling, similar to which I have used on many projects, but always with the caveat that they can be difficult and costly to install. I liked this product because it seemed to resolve some of those issues, and in addition it had the possibility to add projectors. Marco Squassoni gave me the low down.
‘The Zero System is unique among stretched ceilings with opal diffusers, as it can be manufactured as a single piece in sizes up to 50m, thanks to our custom rear structure. The white screen attaches easily to the back and can be removed for maintenance without specialist help. It’s suitable for printing on, and if a projector aperture is needed, we use a laser cutter to create one at the specified location’.
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Ilti Luce
Bollards have come a long way since the days where you would have to caveat their use with the phrase, ‘decorative use only’. In the past I remember trying to calculate pathways to achieve BS EN 12464 – 2 using only bollards, only to find the spacings between them were so close and so numerous to make the proposal unaffordable. That’s why this product from Ilti Luce caught my eye. It’s interesting aesthetic combined with its great performance is a bit of a winner. Roberto Martello of Nemo Group explained to me a bit about the product.
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‘We are exhibiting Oliver from ILTI Luce, a brand within the Nemo Group of manufacturers, which is part of a new collection called Greenery. Unlike current market trends that favour rigid and robust products, this line features a distinctly soft aesthetic that can disappear in the greenery, with a special finish that is borrowed from nature, which changes its colour depending on the angle where you look at it.
The Oliver is also a very technically-led product, with two types of distributions. One allows you 9.5 m spacings by 1m, giving you the possibility to light pathways, the other gives a more asymmetric throw, to 3m forward and 6m on the horizontal, meaning you can use a lot less bollards in your project’.
This product is ideal for upscale hospitality and commercial spaces, offering a 2200K option that is more friendly to bugs and bats. Thanks to Roberto for sharing calculation images and lighting class data; having technical information builds confidence in using this product.
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Personally, I really enjoyed the show this year so thanks to all the contributors and manufacturers that took the time out to speak to me; you were great. But a word to the wise: if you are approached for an interview by any media outlet, on whatever subject, there is a general rule of thumb that suggests that they will want to use the information you provide to use in an article, perhaps. If all wanted was a sterile PR-approved version, we would go onto your web page. You know who you are.
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And a final word from the editor – videos on the fly!!
While Chris was busy hunting down the aesthetics of LiGHT25 I was chatting with friends and colleagues about what we felt was going on behind the scenes. And then I bumped into my old friend Dave Thrower – who has a new video camera. Let’s go and talk to a couple of people . . .
Andy Man is the Chief Operating Officer for Manlux Technologies and was promoting a new LED package that might, just might, change the eway that we see tunable lighting. Now THAT was worth a conversation. Let’s hear from Andy:
And I was glad to be able to steal a few minutes of Nigel Harvey’s time. Recolight has been driving forward the argument for circularity and sustainability within the lighting industry; if you haven’t been along to a Circular Lighting Live conference . .. where have you been!?!?
But Nigel is not one to plough a single furrow; he wants the entire farm, thank you very much. The arguments are being won, that is for sure, but – like a decent jigsaw puzzle – if you want to see the full picture there are a lot more pieces that need to be identified and put in place. I suspect that Nigel is a good jigsaw solver. Here he is:
So, come the final half-hour of the show there was just me and Dave looking out over the hall. Let’s wrap it up: