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The 5 Lighting Trends for 2021
Suggestions on materials, silhouettes, and the need-to-know style making trends
By Guest Contributor: Mikki Brammer
Lighting designs by Umberto Bellardi Ricci
lighting fixtures are the brushstrokes that determine a home's focus, mood, and ambiance.
A ceramic panel backsplash can add color and reflective light, depending on the materials you choose in the kitchen. Glass cabinetry and blown-glass pendant lights can also add drama.
The more ways we can find to calm our nerves in today’s unpredictable world, the better—and when it comes to lighting, that means simplicity.
“We’ve been moving away from the sometimes overly complex geometries that have emerged since the ’90s, particularly with the arrival of new computer design technologies that have dominated our thoughts. "There’s a renewed desire for serene and calming forms. I’ve seen a similar transition in other design fields, such as architecture, for a return to more minimal and simple shapes and geometries.”
Globes, pendants, and perfect spheres—mostly clear, but sometimes opaque—are ever popular today, both in large clusters for dramatic chandeliers and as single, straightforward statement sconces. Equally in favor are dome-shaped shades, suggestive of mushrooms and often “evoking a smooth ’70s mod mood in an array of colors that are happy and nostalgic with an emphasis on the warm tones of red, orange, and yellow, or the cooler blues and grassy greens.”
1. Humble Materials
It’s not just shapes that are returning to a more organic state. “I find that materials such as raw metals, ceramics, and glass are very desired in contrast to a lot of the plastics we’ve seen in the more recent past,” says Bellardi Ricci, who adds that tastemakers are beginning to prefer the composition of humble materials over complexity and extravagance.
“I’ve seen a trend towards ceramic sculptural lighting and natural materials such as cork, leather, bamboo, and raffia. Again, following along with social and current cultural trends.
2. The Sconce
Using this type of fixture on bathroom walls next to the mirrors adds elegance and plenty of reflective lighting for those up close, personal facial glances.
Long extinct are the days when flicking a switch would flood the entire room with light. Nowadays it’s all about creatively targeted lighting solutions, “We see stylish sconces adorning walls in bedrooms, bathrooms, and sleek sitting spaces, perfect for reading.” Additionally, we have seen a rise in lighting under shelves and cabinets to highlight curated collections in communal spaces or provide additional lighting for reading recipes in the kitchen.
“The sconce is still a very desired type of lighting due to its ability to not absorb precious floor space in dense urban environments, but also in the context where screens and computers are so predominant that we often require more lateral wall-washed lighting rather than a direct ceiling illumination or direct light,” Bellardi Ricci says.
“We’ve been steering our clients toward sconces and table or floor lamps to achieve a softer ambient lighting,” Chan says. “I’ve always favored indirect lighting, and there are some beautiful ways to achieve custom sculptural lighting built-in to walls and surfaces with framing and plaster.”
3. Bronze Chandeliers
In the dining room,
If the past year or so has taught us anything, it’s to cherish the moments with our nearest and dearest—especially around the table, where formal family dinners are back in favor. Along with the gradual return of dinner parties and the rise of larger-scale dining tables as statement pieces, spectacular chandeliers are taking pride of place above them, “growing ever larger and more impressive in scale and with the ability for adjustable directions of light.”
4. Floor Lamps
Embody the current taste for sculptural lighting. Some can be made from Japanese washi paper to add translucent lighting as well as giving the room a moody glow.
A sculptural lighting fixture can add drama and interest at eye level.
5. Lighting As Sculpture
Form + Function
As lighting fixtures become as much about form as they are about function, designers are embracing them as another means of bringing statement works of art within a home.
Lighting as Art Work
For his recent show “Dawn” at Matter in New York City, Bellardi Ricci presented a series of modular lighting fixtures that use strategically folded aluminum to refract the warmth of light, in an effect he describes as being similar to a hand shielding a flame.
“In my experience, people want more than just functional lights or traditional decorative lamps,” he says. “They’re looking for evocative light-emitting pieces, closer to light sculptures or light objects with spatial benefits. In the spaces that we live in, we generally like to surround ourselves with objects that have a story.” And they can take on roles beyond pure function, and play a more theatrical role: “They bring suspense and drama into our spaces by creating this interplay of shadow and light, like a theatrical lighting set, from the most minimal to the most extreme of settings.”
Do you wish to have information about the proper way to light a bathroom? Or how to light various small spaces to add ambiance? Or some suggestion about how to properly light your closet?
I can provide you with an assortment of tips to make your space shine! Just call me- I can help.
Judy@JudithSutton.com
908 803-0472
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