Designers see the light

The Vos Pad - lighting to suit your mood

5 April 2012

How many visionary designers does it take to change a light bulb? None. Instead, they create a home where you will never have to change a light bulb again.

Which is exactly what Marcel Jean Vos has done in a futuristic Chelsea Harbour apartment called the Vos Pad. It is a good job there are no bulbs to change, because the one-bedroom apartment packs in more than 500 tiny lights. More if you count the 1,000 built in to the Chris Levine light sculpture above the bed. Throughout the apartment, the result is a beautiful glow of either white or coloured light: you decide.

The Vos Pad is lit entirely using tiny, environmentally-friendly LED lights, which last about 100 times as long as ordinary light bulbs and are 10 times more energy-efficient.

Recent advances mean that for the first time they are bright enough to light the home, but the real reason designers are getting excited about LEDs is the potential for colour.

A small light fitting containing three LEDs (one red, one green and one blue) lets you create any colour in the spectrum, which means your living room can change colour to suit your mood.

This is no novelty-lighting concept: it is a new way to decorate. Simply whitewash walls to turn them into a blank canvas, then redecorate at the touch of a button.

An intelligent control system means you can slowly cycle through the entire rainbow, pick a single colour or even set a timer. "If you want to wake up at 7.30am, you can programme it so that the bedroom chromatically lights up with a sunrise effect," according to Vos.

The Vos Pad uses LEDs to spectacular effect. The company even worked with lighting engineer Litelogic to create glass shower screens and kitchen worktops that glow, again in any colour.

Litelogic also supplied its new Smart Candles, a rechargeable eco-friendly alternative to tea lights; inside glass holders they look exactly like the real thing but without the fire hazard. They are available from John Lewis (about £45 for a set of four).

Safety is a major advantage of LEDs. They are very low power, so there is no danger of shocks, and because they do not generate heat, they are safe to put in the floor.

Fitting is similar to recessed halogen lights, so you need a transformer and wires. The Vos Pad uses ACDC Luxeon Lumiled fittings, including Minicubeus (£60) wallmounted fittings that wash the wall in bright patches of colour and Atlantis (£90) three-colour fittings mounted in the floor.

Some are even mounted in the spa bath. They are controlled by a hi-tech Lutron Grafik Integrale (£910), but you can also control a room's colour using three dimmer switches to adjust the amount of red, green and blue light.

Vos says that a single room can be lit for a few hundred pounds, and that the lighting adds two to three times its value to the property. So, while the lighting in the Vos Pad cost £30,000, he estimates that it added £60,000 to £90,000 to the apartment's price tag (it's on the market with Foxtons for £750,000).

LEDs can also be found in cutting-edge freestanding lighting. Mathmos uses them in colour-changing, rechargeable lights, such as the Aduki (£35) and Tumbler (£50), and inside its new Tuba light (£78), a 30cm-high glass horn. Put your hand into the Tuba to change between modes: from phasing through a range of colours to reacting to music.

Light is also important for health. If you find yourself craving carbs and lacking energy at this time of year, you could be one of the estimated 90 per cent of people who suffer from "winter blues", a mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) caused by the lack of daylight in winter months. Strong lighting can help.

The Philips Bright Light HF3305 (£199) is a light box designed to combat winter blues, to be used for an hour or two each morning.

Colour therapists are also working with LED lighting. Visit the Vos Pad and it's easy to see why: the lighting is so energising that you hardly notice the view of the Thames. You also forget about the idea of changing light bulbs.

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Designers see the light

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