Sustainable illumination

Since 2005, the Lichtwoche (Light Week) show in Sauerland has been the meeting place for manufacturers, retailers, buyers and resellers. At the week-long twelfth edition, 40 companies from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and Italy showed over 3,000 international visitors what trendy colours and shapes will soon be lighting up apartments, houses and gardens. Reference was made throughout to the important topic of sustainability. Natural materials such as wood, cardboard, ceramic, felt and even cork or grass are consistently understood as design elements and incorporated into collections.

Lichtwoche is becoming more international every year and is now the leading trade fair for the home lighting sector, reported Andreas Kuhrt, managing director of Eglo Leuchten Deutschland. According to Kuhrt, all DIY store customers had taken a look at the new portfolio with 700 new products and liked the complete concepts. Due to current developments, the DIY market is moving away from decorative lighting towards functional lighting, "and we have taken this into account in our product range development".

In the bathroom sector, black is the colour of the moment and wood is conquering the wet room. The natural trend is continuing, at Eglo with wood such as birch and bamboo, lampshades made of flax nonwovens, paper or sisal, with transparent fabrics, felt, glass and ceramic. Eglo Expert was newly presented with wet room trays and UV-resistant, impact-proof plastic lights for outdoors, especially for the DIY customer group.

At Briloner, marketing manager Vanessa Koch and her team presented 600 new products in a 1,800 m2 showroom. She promised "a superior price-performance ratio and a perfected product structure with genuine technical innovations and designs". The focus here is also on sustainability. Plastic has been banned from packaging and all products in the Unplugged battery range already meet the regulatory requirements from 2027, thanks to replaceable batteries and circuit boards.

Owner and managing director Wolf Walter Hustedt added that Briloner refrains from greenwashing with certificates and pointed out that the luminaires in energy efficiency class A consume at least 50 percent less electricity, that half of the new recessed luminaires are made of recycled material and that all the wood used is FSC-certified.

Vanessa Koch showed matt black, wood and the trend colour copper in the bathroom. At Briloner, straw, water grass and real leaves are…