Light Emitting Wallpaper

With alternative lighting solutions becoming a typical consideration in sustainable interior design, Jonas Samson’s illuminated wallpaper is set to take the Salone Internazionale del Mobile and its design junkies by storm. A clever mix of the graphic, textile-inspired papers of the recent-past and organic technologies of the future, his light-emitting wallpaper happily straddles the fence between kiddie night-light and inventive design feature. It’s eco-credentials: turning a two-dimensional surface into a light source versus the traditional bulb/lamp construct.

Although we’ll have to wait till the Milan fair to find out the exact technology, this Light-Emitting Wallpaper harkens back to recent products exploring digital paper by Miquel Mora, part of the Flat Futures project– developed by the Royal College of Art Design Interactions Department– showcased at the MoMA’s ‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ exhibition. By using developments like e-ink and OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) that enable electronic components to be printed and transferred onto flat and rollable surfaces Mora believes, “Objects will wear technology instead of carrying it inside…The technology will become their skin.”