Inspirations - Lunares Blog

There’s an evening at the turn of November and December when the street splits into two camps: houses that sink into darkness, and those that suddenly look like a postcard. The difference is usually a few hours of work and a well-thought-out set: LED icicles on the eaves, a light curtain on the terrace, a string of lights around a tree trunk and glowing spheres in the garden. In this post we turn outdoor Christmas lights into a plan – from choosing a colour theme, through decorations for the façade, trees and garden, to power safety and mounting that leaves no scars on the house.

When the sun starts setting before five in late October, and by December it is dark around half past three, your home takes over the role the sky played all summer – it becomes the main source of light in your life. The good news: you don’t need a renovation to get through the season of short days in good spirits. A few well-planned points of light – floor lamps in dead corners, table lamps on windowsills and sideboards, warm decorative bulbs – and the same room that felt grey and cramped in November starts looking like a magazine cover after dusk. In this post we show how to brighten your home in autumn and winter: layer by layer, room by room.

There is a piece of furniture-that-isn’t-furniture that has refused to leave the covers of German and Scandinavian interior magazines for years: the black metal pendant light. A simple drop with a black shade hangs over tables in Berlin tenement flats, over islands in Copenhagen kitchens and over benches in Stockholm living rooms – and everywhere it looks as if it had always been there. That is no accident, and no passing fad. A black metal pendant is to an interior what the little black dress is to a wardrobe: a base that goes with everything, pulls the composition together and never grows old. In this post we take the phenomenon apart – and help you choose a black pendant light for your own home.

Gold and brass lighting brings warmth and a sense of quiet luxury to a room – but only when it is used as a deliberate accent rather than a theme. The trick is to tell real brass from a gold-coloured coating, to size the fixture to the furniture instead of the whole room, and to repeat the finish just enough that it looks intentional. This guide walks through choosing, placing and caring for gold and brass lamps so the effect reads as warm and considered, not like a showroom.

The gazebo and the pergola hold one quiet advantage over the rest of the garden: a structure of their own. Beams, rafters and posts are ready-made places for light – something an open lawn can only dream of. A well-lit gazebo becomes a second living room after dark: dinners run until midnight, cards get played, and a passing shower is waited out with a mug of tea. A badly lit one stands dark, or glares with a single bare bulb under the roof. In this post we show how to light a gazebo and a pergola in layers: a string of lights under the roof, wall lights on the posts, a lamp on the table and a pinch of automation that has the light waiting, ready, before you even sit down.

There are lamps that light an interior, and there are lamps that are its jewellery. The Tiffany lamp belongs to the second category twice over: by day it’s a colourful sculpture in glass, by night – a glowing stained-glass window that turns an ordinary corner of the room into the cosiest spot in the house. Though the technique is more than a hundred and twenty years old, the dragonflies, wisteria and geometric mosaics are returning to classic and modern interiors with equal force. We explain how a real Tiffany shade is made, how it differs from an ordinary stained glass lamp, where it fits best and how to care for coloured glass so it pleases the eye for generations.

A gold, copper or brass wall light can warm a wall without an overdecorated effect. The key lies in proportion, finish quality and light colour. Brushed metal looks calmer than a mirror polish, and a warm coating does not always mean solid gold, copper or brass. Here is how to choose a brass light above a mirror, when a copper fitting works and how to combine warm metals with a modern interior.

A summer evening has one flaw: it ends. When dusk falls after nine, the patio turns into a dark stage with no actors, and the balcony into a concrete niche nobody steps out onto any more. Yet it is precisely after dark, when the heat lets go, that sitting outside is at its loveliest. The difference between a terrace you flee back indoors from and one where conversations run past midnight usually comes down to two or three points of warm light. In this post we show how to build patio and balcony lighting out of ready-made blocks – string lights, rechargeable lamps, glowing spheres and solar lanterns – with no renovation or chiselling, and quite often without a socket.

Black lamps work like a graphic frame: they define zones, repeat the lines of windows and furniture and add contrast without introducing another colour. Yet black can dominate a small room, while an opaque shade may direct almost all light downwards. A black pendant, ceiling light or wall lamp should therefore be selected for function, beam and scale as well as style.