Lighting Trends 2013: Gilded style

I was lucky enough to spend the last 3 days at the Dallas Market Center for International Lighting Market.  Every year this is the largest event for the lighting industry and their opportunity to release the newest products to the largest audience (comprised of wholesale buyers from just about everywhere).  Now let me say that the DMC is impressive all on it's own, but the lighting portion is over a million square feet of lighting resources.  Imagine Mall of America, but bigger and all lighting; each showroom is basically the size of a department store (some smaller, some bigger) with the largest being over 30,000 sq ft.

View from one end of the Trade Mart in the DMC

 Luckily my coworkers warned me and I was well prepared with multiple pairs of flats, but after 3 days of walking on concrete, my feet definitely need a rest today. (for more info on the DMC, click here, we stayed primarily in the Trade Mart portion). Wishes for next year: Better wi-fi and vendors who offer power outlets; I took about 1,000 pics on my iPhone and live Tweeted & Facebooked while I was there, but absolutely would have done more if I hadn't been concerned about my battery life & where to find the next outlet. Also, they had a giant Social Media board that featured tweets with the hashtag #lightingmkt, and I ended up on the board a few times, pretty cool to look up and see your own tweet on a huge screen like this:

Now that you have some background, onto the fun part! There were some definite trends in lighting, including: Whites, Spheres, Gilding/Metallics, Historic, Natural Materials, Bold Colors, and Fururistic design.  I'm going to focus on Gilding, because everyone needs more Gold in their lives.

1. Ion Chandelier (Hinkley) 2. York Sconce (Hudson Valley) 3. Ecran Pendants (Tech Lighting) 4. Infinity Chandelier (Eurofase) 5. Spectra Chandelier (Hinkley) 6. Veubronze sconce (Elk)  7. Hugo Chandelier (Feiss)  8. Uni Chandelier (Troy)  9. Ombrello Chandelier (Eurofase) 10. Bronx Pendant (Eurofase) 11. Novello Chandelier (Eurofase) 12. Houdini Chandelier (Corbett) 13. Manchester Semi-flush (Maxim) 14. Amytis Chandelier (Schonbek) 15. Muse Pendant (Corbett) 16. Camelot sconce (LBL) 17. Poetry Chandelier (Corbett) 18. Gold dusted Crystal (Capital)
Gold Notes:
#3 Is made using a silkscreening process that actually puts gold and silver ON the glass
#7 The inspiration for the design came from vintage extendable sewing machine lights
#8 Inspired by a Sea Urchin (and not the only version I saw, just the only gold one)
#14 Used Swarovski crystals that don't show as well in the pic, but sparkle in person
#16 It's actually gold brass chain mail, but inspired from another fixture that uses swarovski crystal in gold mesh

Golden Feature:

One thing I learned this week, when you're taking as many iPhone pictures as I did, surrounded by rooms full of lighting, it gets hot and the likelihood of your iphone slipping out of your hand gets exponentially higher.  I dropped my phone a few times and my case did it's job and sacrificed itself to protect the phone. Cracks and chips just aren't attractive, and the case looses ability to protect the phone every time it happens. my BF was thoughtful and I came home to this Para Duo case in gold, the black is rubber and the portion on the front wraps around the phone (important for me, I'm most afraid of cracking my screen) Available on Amazon for $28.90

Golden Quote: "When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent" -George Carlin