Product Monday: Venetian Blinds Upcycled Into Luminaires

Reclaimed Blinds Illuminate Circular Design Potential

Designer Reza Raeisifar has transformed discarded aluminum Venetian blinds into a modular family of luminaires that reframes an everyday shading material as a tool for directing, diffusing and sculpting artificial light. The Keker Collection uses reclaimed blind slats—components conventionally intended to block or regulate daylight—to create cylindrical lighting forms with a distinctly architectural rhythm.

The project began in 2018 after Raeisifar found an unused Venetian blind in a storage space and began investigating its material potential. That early exploration subsequently informed a lighting proposal for the Afarinesh project at Shiraz University. Keker’s premise is straightforward but effective: reuse the thin, curved aluminum slats as a repeated optical and visual element surrounding an LED linear source, rather than treating them as waste or simply recycling them into raw material.

A Slat-Based Optical System

At the center of the initial Keker design is a linear LED light source that emits illumination in 360 degrees. Three laser-cut acrylic sheets establish the fixture’s structural framework, with longitudinally cut aluminum slats inserted into their grooves. The resulting repeated array creates a cylindrical, open-sided enclosure around the source.

The curved slats perform several functions at once. They shield the LED from direct view, helping improve visual comfort, while allowing light to escape through the spacing and geometry of the assembly. The layered arrangement also produces shifting light-and-shadow effects on surrounding surfaces, making the luminaire as much an atmospheric object as a source of general illumination. In the wall-mounted version, for example, the slats create a radial shadow pattern that extends the fixture’s presence beyond its physical form.

For lighting designers and manufacturers, Keker is a useful example of how recycled materials can become integral to a luminaire’s optical identity rather than serving only as a decorative or sustainability-oriented story. The aluminum elements are not hidden inside the product; their familiar profile, curvature and repetition directly govern shielding, light distribution and perceived texture.

One System, Multiple Typologies

A defining aspect of the collection is its modular construction. The same framework-and-slat principle has been adapted into pendant, linear, ceiling-mounted, wall-mounted and floor-standing formats. This approach enables a recognizable material and design language to extend across several lighting categories without requiring an entirely new construction concept for each product type.

The Keker Collection’s development also illustrates the long gestation period often involved in experimental lighting. The first iteration was exhibited in 2019 at Ordibehesht Gallery in Tehran. By 2025, Raeisifar had consolidated the various versions developed over the intervening years into a full collection shown at Design Gallery One in Tehran.

Beyond Material Recovery

Keker points to a broader opportunity for the lighting industry: moving beyond conventional recycled-content claims toward designs that preserve and capitalize on the inherent form of reclaimed components. Venetian blind slats offer a lightweight, reflective, flexible and already-curved aluminum profile—characteristics that make them especially relevant for decorative luminaires, hospitality installations and other applications where glare control and visual texture are important.

Rather than melting down the blinds and reintroducing the aluminum into a generic manufacturing stream, Raeisifar retains their recognizable identity and assigns them a new lighting function. The result is a collection that merges circular-design thinking with a practical light-control strategy: a discarded daylight-management component becomes an active element in the distribution and experience of electric light.

More information is available here.

All images © Navid Atrvash.

David Shiller

David Shiller is the Publisher of LightNOW, and Senior Business Development Consultant at Capacity Consulting, a North American consulting firm providing business development services to advanced lighting manufacturers. The ALA awarded David the Pillar of the Industry Award. David has been co-chair of the ALA’s Engineering Committee since 2010. David established MaxLite’s OEM component sales into a multi-million dollar division. He invented GU24 lamps while leading ENERGY STAR lighting programs for the US EPA. David has been published in leading lighting publications, including LD+A, enLIGHTenment Magazine, LEDs Magazine, and more.

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