Five Australian Lighting Studios We Love Right Now

Kaiko Design Interiors - Holophane Pendant

At Kaiko Design, we have always championed Australian makers. Some of the most inventive lighting in the world is designed and made here, by studios working close to their materials and unafraid to experiment. Good lighting does more than illuminate a room. It sets the mood, holds the eye and gives a scheme its character after dark. It is also one of the most personal decisions in an interior, since a single well-chosen pendant or sconce can anchor a space the way a piece of art does. Kaiko Design, a Sydney interior design studio, is drawn to pieces with that kind of presence. These five makers are among our current favourites.

Articolo Studios

Articolo is one of the most quietly luxurious lighting studios in the country. Founded in Melbourne by Nicci Kavals, it marked a decade of design in 2025 with a new flagship showroom in Richmond. Mouth-blown glass is the signature. Each piece carries the subtle irregularities of the maker's hand, so that when lit it casts a shadow and a glow unlike any other in the range. Brass and bronze bases ground the glass with warmth. The studio sells only to architects and designers, and its work appears in some of the world's most considered homes and hotels. There is real colour here too, seen in saturated pieces like the Slab sconce, which suits a scheme built around colour rather than neutrals.

Volker Haug Studio

Volker Haug has spent two decades proving how far a single material can go. The German-born, Melbourne-based designer founded his studio in 2004 and works with a team of makers from a converted warehouse in Brunswick East. Brass is the cornerstone, celebrated most directly in the und Messing collection, whose name means "and brass". The studio finishes each piece by hand across a spectrum of tones, from polished to dark bronze, and pairs brass with less expected materials like fibreglass and blown glass. There is always a note of play beneath the precision. Its ongoing Me and You collaboration with interior practice Flack Studio has drawn wide attention, and the studio took out a 2025 Melbourne Design Week Award. This is lighting with both wit and rigour.

Ross Gardam

Ross Gardam makes lighting that behaves like sculpture. Established in 2007 and hand-crafted in Melbourne, the studio is preoccupied with how light moves through and around a form. The Ceto range uses contemporary glassblowing to ripple handblown glass, so each piece diffuses light with its own character, while the Volant chandelier reads as a kinetic object, apparently in motion while standing still. The palette is restrained and the forms are clean, often built on a gently fluted bell or cloche. The work is well recognised, with the Méne collection taking an INDE.Award and the studio presenting a standout installation at Milan Design Week in 2025. These are pieces that hold a room without shouting.

Studio Henry Wilson

Studio Henry Wilson brings the list home to Sydney. Established in the inner city in 2012, the studio casts lighting in small batches from solid bronze, brass, aluminium and stone. The Surface Sconce, cast in two halves and available in metal or in veined travertine and marble, is a modern classic, joined by the Scoop and Elbow wall lights. Wilson works to an ethos of imperfect beauty. The metal arrives bright and oxidises over time into a distinctive patina, so each piece keeps changing quietly in the room. Made, finished and polished in Sydney, these are heavy, tactile, almost monumental objects designed to last a lifetime. We rate the studio as much for that longevity as for the sculptural forms.

A Design Studio

A Design Studio is the other side of local, a Sydney lighting practice led by Alex Fitzpatrick. Its work is built on a single idea, capturing light within a material so the source itself stays hidden. The pieces often carry a quiet Sydney reference. The Greenway pendant draws on Macquarie Lighthouse in Vaucluse, the country's oldest lighthouse, named for its convict architect Francis Greenway, while the Eon collection pairs concealed sources with crackle glass shades developed with glass artist Ben Edols. Fitzpatrick blends glassblowing and metalwork with contemporary manufacturing, and customises many of his fittings for residential interior design projects, which makes the studio a natural collaborator on a considered home.

A sensibility we bring to every project

Championing makers like these is not a side interest. It is how the studio thinks, whether the maker is a lighting studio or one of the Australian ceramic artists we return to elsewhere. Specifying a distinctive Australian piece into a scheme, a mouth-blown pendant over a dining table or a cast bronze sconce in a hallway, is part of how we shape an interior, where every element is chosen to sit within a considered whole. We pair characterful fittings with efficient, warm energy-efficient lighting, and we think as carefully about lighting small spaces as we do about the hero moments.

We work to fixed-fee pricing, so this level of consideration is built into the process from the start, with no surprises. If you would like a home shaped with this kind of eye, talk to the studio about your project.