Light waves

San Francisco lighting designer Pablo Pardo delights the eye with two new chic and mood-lifting lamps.

By Diane Dorrans Saeks, Photograph by Massimiliano Bolzonella

Pablo Pardo first lit up the design world in 1993 with the introduction of his Piccola lamp. Now part of SFMOMA’s permanent collection, the clever 14-inch-high charmer combines a colorful, stitched-leather beanbag base with a floating aluminum shade.

Fifteen years later, the Venezuelan-born Pardo has moved to the forefront of American lighting design. His classic Cortina and Sophie lamps decorate countless hotel suites, while his task lights brighten desks across the globe.

His Potrero Hill–based company, Pablo Designs, offers 24 models in dozens of colors, mostly Pardo’s own inspir­ations. But he also works closely with industrial designer Peter Stathis, who created the new Link task light and the minimalist Tube Top lamp, with a formed acrylic base. Other collaborators include Fred Bould, Tetsushi Inoue, Al Glass, and Fernando Pardo, Pablo’s identical twin.


Above: Pablo Designs’ versatile Tube Top lamp (from $99) is elegantly simple in both construction and silhouette. Available in four sizes, from a 14-inch table lamp to a majestic five-foot floor lamp, and in a rainbow of colors.

Design connoisseurs appreciate Pardo’s sense of whimsy, which fuses the most sophisticated technical sensibilities with a lighthearted approach to silhou-ette and color. His Umbrella lamp, with a Lycra shade balanced on a slender steel stem and a cast-iron base, seems to dance around a room. And his Aura table and pendant lamps add hypnotic allure with an optical film that produces a flamelike glow. “I like lamps with lines that are pared down to the essentials,” Pardo says. “I prefer my designs to be very understated, unpretentious, and easily integrated into a room or a hotel lobby or an office.”

Instead of flourishes and embellishments, Pardo focuses on sustainability. “These are never throwaway designs,” he says. Case in point: his new Brazo task light, a simple aluminum tube with a 360-degree pivoting shade and versatile lampshade control. The Brazo’s light source, a bright and energy-efficient LED, is rated for 50,000 hours. Just don’t leave the lights on when you leave the room—though, admittedly, it may be hard to bring yourself to turn them off. Pablo Designs, 415-865-5000, pablodesigns.com



Pablo Designs’ new matte aluminum, fully adjustable Link lamp ($350) reduces the complexity of a task light to its essentials. Its advanced LED technology also keeps energy consumption to a minimum.

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Diane Dorrans Saeks is San Francisco's contributing interior design editor.