The trump cards of Finnish lighting manufacturers are earthy materials and gentle light. You can surprisingly improve the atmosphere of your home by changing the lighting.
Habitare, the interior design trade fair, is buzzing from the very first hours. The crowd in the halls of the Helsinki Fair Center has clearly suffered from the lack of fairs. After a two-year break from the corona virus, trying out sofas, experimenting with materials and admiring new design objects feels like a luxury. As if the long break had breathed new life into the event, which has been organized since the 1970s.
Corona didn’t hit the interior design industry as badly as many others. More time than usual was spent at home, working, going to school, playing sports and resting. And of course we got sick. People began to think about both how the home looks and how it functions.
Staying at home, which became familiar during the Corona period, will now continue, whether we like it or not. Inflation is shrinking the salary bag, and the price of electricity is skyrocketing. At the same time, the nights are getting darker and the days are getting shorter. The lamps light up.
However, for the lighting manufacturer, the war in Europe is a new kind of crisis. According to Frenzel, there has already been a lot of adjustment with logistics. A large part of the company’s products is exported.
Secto lamps are made from domestic birch. Russia has been a major importer of birch, and now a large number of companies that used Russian wood are competing for the same Finnish materials.
A good lamp does not annoy the user
Today, homes are lit with several small lamps instead of one larger lamp.
Both also agree on what the lamp must not do under any circumstances.
– Glare is the worst thing that can happen in a light fixture, Niskanen states.
– The lamp can cause a teasing glare, which is disturbing and unpleasant. The worst is anti-glare. Many people have experience of this latter on the road, when the lights of an oncoming car blind them.
Like Secto, Himmee manufactures designer lamps mainly from natural materials. Plastic is used as little as possible. Himme’s most famous product is probably the Toad table lamp standing on a wooden leg. Kieppimäinen Loop has even made it to the shop of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In Niskanen’s opinion, lighting should always have some juju. When the Filly foot lamp started to look like a stick horse in the opinion of the designer’s family, small ears were added to it. The ears are so stylized that you might not think of them as horse ears, but a small addition gives the lamp a suitable twist, juju, which makes it stand out from other floor lamps equipped with a metal shade.
Himme’s latest material innovation is ceramics. The Circus lamp, made by hand by casting clay, was originally born in Finland’s EU embassy in Brussels. In the mission, the lamp sparkled with gold, but the Cirkus, intended for homes, is more down-to-earth. The playful lamp can be hung on the wall or ceiling.
Pleasant lighting can be achieved even with a small budget
The price of a Finnish design lamp is usually from several hundreds to even thousands of euros. If you take into account that a well-designed lamp is used for a long time and is even passed down to the next generations, the price will of course level out. For many, it may still be impossible to invest, for example, four hundred euros in a floor lamp, let alone thousands.
According to Timo Niskanen, however, light is not only the right of the wealthy. With good design, you can go a long way even with more affordable lamps.
– Often it’s more about creativity and an eye for interior design. It’s worth remembering that you shouldn’t mix multi-colored light in the same space, Niskanen reminds.
Remember to turn off the lights!
Secto CEO Emma Frenzel estimates that interest in lighting design for homes has increased especially in the last ten years. It has become something to invest time and money into.
The same trends can be seen in the lighting as in the rest of the interior.
According to Himmee company’s Timo Niskanen, high-quality materials have started to be valued and the aim is to move away from disposable consumption. When a lamp becomes a long-lasting household item, the consumer also wants to know who made it and what kind of story is behind it. Transparency of the manufacturing process is also important.
LED lights have brought many new possibilities to lighting. Not only do LEDs consume less than incandescent bulbs or halogens, you no longer need a separate dimmer between them and the switch if you want to adjust the intensity of the lights.
Lighting is now also required to be multi-purpose. For example, the Finnish company Innolux manufactures lamps that are both ordinary lamps and bright light lamps.
Fluctuations in the price of electricity and wild readings in electricity bills have made the light extinguishers go again. Lighting in homes has been calculated to be around 10 percent of the consumption of the entire economy. However, these calculations were made before the advent of LED lights. With the help of LEDs, lighting costs are said to be reduced by twenty percent.
Nevertheless, a light burning in vain consumes in vain.
In the video, Frenzel and Niskanen explain why you should click off the lights.
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