Plumen Partners with Pantone to Add Color to 3D Printed Pendant Lighting

December 4, 2017 by Sarah Saunders 3D Design 3D Printing Business

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Designer low energy lighting company Plumen uses 3D printing technology to bring beauty to ordinary, utilitarian lighting, and even re-imagined the form of the light bulb back in 2010, which led to the development of its Plumen 001 designer low energy light bulb. The company is perhaps most well-known in the 3D printing industry for its 3D printed Kayan lampshade and relatively new line of 3D printed Ruche lampshades, the latter of which works with its range of LED filament WattNott bulbs. This week, Plumen announced a new partnership with color master corporation Pantone, the result of which will also work with its WattNott line.

Pantone was founded in 1963, and introduced an all-encompassing color system for professional designers. The company is now a global consumer brand, and is working with Plumen to launch six 3D printed pendant lamps that are designed to fit the WattNot light bulb line.

The design of elegant pendant lamps has been further spiffed up with the help of 3D printing technology before – a few weeks ago, Decimal introduced its line of premium 3D printed shades for pendant lighting, and I’m a big fan of architect and designer David Münscher’s lovely 3D printed ION lampshades, made to cover pendant lamps.

As many other products in the world, Pantone’s color system was developed out of frustration. Its founder, Lawrence Herbert, knew that it was extremely difficult to print exact colors from single names – as someone who went to a college where the school colors are black and magenta, not black and pink, I concur. Herbert did not appreciate the poor quality of the color system at the time, and so the company changed up the way color itself was actually communicated. Pantone developed a numeric system that decreased how many variables there were in the printing process, so anyone in the world is able to reproduce a very specific color with a high level of accuracy.

Pantone and its color system have helped many designers match their intention with the correct color, print, and product, and will now work with Plumen to make lighting more colorful as well. Plumen has an origin story similar to Pantone’s, in that it realized efficient lighting was, as the company says, “a broken system of unimaginatively designed products.”

Just like Pantone reinvented the color-matching system, Plumen reinvented the relatively simple-looking light bulb, using eye-catching design and innovative technology, like 3D printing. The company believes that its work in lighting has “increased the adoption of a more efficient technology,” and is excited to be partnering up with Pantone.

Nik Roope, Plumen’s Creative Director and Co-Founder, said of Pantone, “We’re very proud to be working with a brand so well renowned, that was built by challenging and improving an age-old, broken system, bringing some well-honed colour into lives, as we bring in light.”

The six 3D printed Deneb pendants were designed by Pantone especially for Plumen’s WattNott bulbs, and are available on the Plumen website starting at $64.95 in the following unique colors:

Black Beauty
Brilliant White
Pewter
Cardinal
Sargasso Sea
Forest Biome

As Plumen puts it, “Pantone is bound to colour as Plumen are bound to light. And both are here to stay.”

Would you purchase one of these 3D printed pendant lights? Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

[Images provided by Plumen]