Hasta La Ideas

Don’t let the bland name of Scottish start-up Design LED Products fool you. At last year’s Lux Live 2013 lighting exhibition, DLP showed off the flexible resin-based LED tile you see above, considered to be a potential game-changer in lighting design. The tiles are flexible, modular, inexpensive, highly efficient (roughly 90%), can emit light on one or both sides, and “can be produced in any shape or size up to 1m, offering up to 20,000 lumen per square meter,” according to the press release. They also do not require external “thermal management,” i.e. bulky heat sinks.

Well, someone noticed, and that someone was KIEA. Today it was reported that Ikea’s GreenTech venture capital division plunked down an undisclosed sum to invest in the company, giving them access to the light tiles for their presumed inclusion in future product designs. “The tiles are unique as they are extremely thin, flexible and low cost and can be seamlessly joined together in exciting new designs,” Ikea said in a statement. “The partnership is a clear strategic fit for IKEA and our goal to make living sustainably affordable and attractive for millions of people.”

While you can still buy halogens and CFLs at IKEA today, by the way, the company is reportedly planning to switch exclusively to LEDs by September of 2015.

Anyone want to take a guess at what they’ll be designing with these? Kitchen wall cabinets with these tiles on the undersides seem like the obvious choice, but those would be flat; I’m most curious to see how they’d exploit the curvability of the technology.

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