Since its early-2000s inception, Lumens has remained the premiere digital destination for design professionals, specifiers, and discerning aesthetes to discover lighting, furniture, and decor from more than 400 global brands. But with the opening of the Lumens Design Gallery in San Francisco’s Jackson Square, the brand steps into a bold new era – one that is extraordinary, imaginative, visual, and exuberant.
This is no conventional showroom. The 4,200-square-foot gallery unfolds as a series of curated vignettes, collaborative workspaces, and installations that invite guests to experience design as curation, storytelling, and ongoing dialogue. The goal is less about display and more about discovery – showing how pieces converse with one another, how color and form transform perception, and how design can spark both inspiration and conversation.
At the center of this evolution is the Designer in Residence program, which hands over the gallery’s prominent street-facing reception space to a leading designer every six months. For the gallery’s debut, Lumens tapped New York–based designer Ghislaine Viñas, known for her fearless use of color, playful approach to scale, and exuberant imagination.
Viñas approached the gallery as a fluid medium rather than a display – spaces to be worked like clay, sculpted by product and finished by color. Rejecting the idea of a traditional showroom, she envisioned something closer to an art installation where everyday objects are elevated and seen from unexpected angles. Chairs are hung on hooks in reference to Shaker traditions and furniture workshops. Rugs are treated as textiles and mounted on walls like tapestries. Bold graphics and florals become powerful visual anchors rather than floor coverings.
“It’s so lovely, when you start working on a project, for there to be so much trust. And there weren’t any parameters,” Viñas shares. “They gave me the space to work in – and I loved that – because they didn’t say ‘push product.’ It was more like, just do what you want in the space. I could think beyond…”
Lighting – often the most functional of design categories – was transformed into something malleable, even kinetic. Visitors encounter Arielle Zuckerman’s knitted pendants, which resemble globes suspended in nets, and luminous glass fixtures that evoke lollipops or floating suns. Together, these choices create an environment that feels at once joyful and surreal. Ordinary objects become extraordinary through context and imagination.
Color is a dominant thread in Viñas’ installation. Mustard yellows, blush pinks, and earthy reds supersaturate the space while deep crimson accents, punctuated throughout, heighten tension through contrast. The effect is immersive – stepping into the gallery feels like entering an abstraction, with every product carefully chosen to extend the palette and provoke emotion.
The curation process itself was revelatory. Viñas dove deep into Lumens’ vast catalog, often searching by color rather than product type, uncovering smaller makers and unexpected pieces that even the Lumens team hadn’t noticed.
“Ghislaine created things that we could have never even imagined, and that’s, I think, what made it so special,” recalls Dana Gers, Lumens CMO. “She was the perfect person to be our inaugural designer in residence.”
The Lumens Design Gallery offers a new model for inspiration and sales. Guests can experience installations in person – absorbing scale, craftsmanship, and materiality in ways impossible online – while also shopping curated vignettes digitally through Lumens’ Source Book and website. The gallery thus bridges the tactile with the digital, extending the brand’s longstanding e-commerce roots into a hybrid experience that’s both sensory and shoppable.
Equally important, the gallery is conceived as a community hub. Its collaborative workspaces and open design encourage architects, students, and clients to engage with design beyond commerce. As Gers explains, “There’s something very emotional about being in the physical space with design. There’s no substitute for the human connection that happens when you’re living with great design.”
The Designer in Residence program ensures that the gallery will remain a constantly evolving source of inspiration. Each new installation will bring a fresh perspective, reflecting the distinct ethos of its guest designer. Viñas’ imaginative, color-driven installation sets the bar high, but the possibilities ahead are infinite.
Future collaborators may transform the gallery in radically different ways – perhaps through minimalism, material experimentation, or technology-driven concepts. This ephemeral approach ensures that no two visits to the Lumens Design Gallery will ever be the same. For the brand, it signals a commitment to dialogue with the design community, inviting industry voices to shape the space and, by extension, the brand’s ongoing narrative. For clients, it means that inspiration is always renewing itself, evolving alongside the changing landscape of design. And for Lumens, it establishes a retail model that is less about inventory and more about imagination, conversation, and connection. Lumens is charting not just its own next chapter, but a new paradigm for specification itself.
To experience Lumens’ refreshed digital space, visit lumens.com.
Photography courtesy of Lumens.
