Highlights from Lux Live 2016

Our engineer, Bertie, went to Lux Live (Europe’s biggest lighting event) last week to scope out the latest in the world of LED lighting. Here he recounts some highlights of the visit. Enjoy!

Last Wednesday I visited Lux Live to check out a few talks on smart bulbs & filament lamps and to see who’s doing what in the world of LED bulbs.

Understandably, “The hipsters’ filament lamp is dead: the next big trends in hospitality lighting” was the most pressing talk to attend. Lighting designer Sally Storey (LDI), facilities manager Gary Lohan (One Aldwych) and large scale purchaser (ex-Mitchell & Butler) discussed the history and future potential of the filament incandescent lamp.

They attribute the success of the filament bulb to its easily dimmable warmth, which at the time of its rise in popularity, was very hard to attain with LED. Naturally, this sparked excitement about the prospect of dim-to-warm LED filament bulbs becoming available. They do however predict to see a resurgence of warmer light in architectural lighting, as these characteristics become available to the whole LED market.

To wrap up the talk Sally spoke about the move in lighting design to natural materials (mouth-blown glass, wicker, wood) gaining momentum and Simon hoped LED would now take the reigns in lighting design and lead the new aesthetic. Perhaps they have seen our Voronoi range and walnut/oak fixtures

Around the exhibition

I found one manufacturer, Illuxtron, who is using AC LED, that is, LEDs driven using AC 240V with no step down or DC transformation. This is advantageous in lighting design because less bulky components are needed. Illuxtron have an AC LED downlight with efficiencies approaching that of conventional LEDs, operating at 70-80lm/W. The circuitry is unbelievably simple (See the picture below, that’s all of it!). They are now providing dimming to around 40% with warm-on-dim transitioning from 3000K – 2700k chips. One to watch.