Trending light

Can you imagine your home without lights? Lights are no longer meant for mere illumination, rather are trending as an embellishment. They have an aesthetic function in defining unseen edges.

Commonly found in contemporary, colonial and classic homes, profile lighting is catching up eventually helping to generate bright and robust ambience. Profile lights are extremely versatile and add a subtle elegance to a home’s entrance, kitchen, or dining room. Upon a wall’s surface, LED lights are inserted, clipped onto an outline and contained within a frame. Currently trending in Kochi, Kozhikode and Adoor, this lighting style is not just limited to home décor, but redefining edges and bringing radiance to even public stage platforms and work spaces. However, profile lighting best suits contemporary style plans and creates an illusion of space.

Though these profile lighting frames are made of aluminium, they do not show a trace of the same. The light is exposed as a single unit outside the defined structure. Sketching out a particular space for illumination, this can be done in assorted shapes like a zigzag, horizontal or L-shaped and many such frames, catering to the plan of space designed. Ronal Joseph, an architect who runs a firm in Vyttila, says, “Profile lighting possesses good durability and lesser maintenance which is one of the reasons why this is trending these days. The profile can be shaped according to the sketched plan and the width usually broadens from 18 to 90 mm.”

Ranging from shades of warm, neutral white and white, these do not pose a hindrance as they are concealed within ceilings and walls. Imported from Thailand, there are also hanging profile light designs. Nowadays, apart from wall, they are seen adorning even mirrors in restrooms. “When lights from a ceiling create shadows, profile lights around mirrors define facial features with much finesse,” says Jitin James, an architect in Elamkulam. Take a zigzag pattern for instance, the room would project a similar structure due to the play of lights. When asked more about this, Don Joseph, an interior designer, says, “Small pathways lit linearly with such lights would trick the eyes into believing the space is bigger than it actually is.”

Exteriors of buildings are also adorned with profile lighting to outline the edges and to highlight the shape of the building’s framework.