Patera and Patera Oval: How the Fibonacci Shade Works

Louis Poulsen's Patera reads from across a room as one calm, glowing ball, yet there is no continuous shade anywhere in it. The sphere is assembled by hand from hundreds of small diamond-shaped cells, each set at its own angle along a spiral borrowed from botany. This piece looks at what that geometry does to the light, how the flattened Patera Oval changes the result, and which size belongs over which table.

A sphere drawn from the Fibonacci sequence

Øivind Slaatto designed the Patera Pendant for Louis Poulsen in 2015. The shade is cut matt PVC: flat, die-cut, diamond-shaped cells that are assembled by hand into a sphere, with their positions set by the Fibonacci sequence, the series in which each number is the sum of the two before it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21). Plants use the same arithmetic. In a sunflower head or a pine cone, the seeds and scales sit on two families of counter-rotating spirals whose counts are consecutive Fibonacci numbers, which is why the packing looks dense and even rather than ranked in rows.

That matters here for a practical reason. A shade built from repeating horizontal rings would show its rings: bright bands, dark bands, and an obvious seam where the pattern starts again. Because the Patera cells follow a spiral instead, no two neighbours sit at quite the same angle, and the eye finds no row to lock onto. The sphere reads as a single luminous surface with a fine texture, and it looks resolved from every side, which is what allows it to hang in the middle of an open-plan room rather than against a wall.

How the cells remove glare from below

Glare is what happens when the eye takes in a small, very bright source against a darker surround. The Patera solves that by geometry rather than by opal diffusion. Each cell is angled so that it catches light from the bulb and passes it on as a small lit plane, while the assembly as a whole blocks the direct view of the source from any angle above 45 degrees. Sit at a table under a Patera and you see hundreds of gently lit facets; you do not see the bulb. Look up at it on a staircase and the pattern rewards the closer view.

The hardware is kept deliberately quiet so the sphere does the talking: suspension in matt-chromed brass and die-cast acrylic, a 4 m white fabric cord, canopy included. The pendant takes a single E27 bulb, with a maximum of 40 W at Ø 300, 60 W at Ø 450 and 100 W at Ø 600 and Ø 900, and integrated LED versions are offered in 2700 K and 3000 K. It is rated IP20 for indoor use, and the bulb is not included.

Four sizes, and the oval that is not a sphere

Patera is made in four diameters plus the oval. The weights are worth reading before you commit to a ceiling point, particularly at the top of the range.

Read the middle column as a rule of thumb about presence. At Ø 300 the Patera behaves like a light; at Ø 900 it behaves like a piece of architecture, and it needs a ceiling fixing that has been thought about in advance.

Patera Oval: the same logic, flattened

The Patera Oval Pendant takes the sphere and presses it into an ellipsoid measuring 500 x 291 x 500 mm, so it occupies far less vertical room: 291 mm deep against the 433 mm of the Ø 450 sphere. It weighs 2.8 kg with an E27 bulb and 5.7 kg in the integrated LED version.

Two things change with the flatter form. The cells conceal the source from angles above 40 degrees rather than 45, and the underside carries a round opening that lets direct light fall on the table below, with a supplied diffuser plate smoothing the step between that opening and the glowing skin around it. The result is a pendant that does real work over a dining table, lighting plates and faces from above, while still reading as a luminous object rather than an obstacle between the people sitting at either end. The suspension here is white opal matt-coated injection-moulded polycarbonate, again with a 4 m white fabric cord and a canopy.

Hanging heights and clusters

Over a dining table, aim for roughly 60–70 cm between the tabletop and the underside of the shade. That keeps the light on the surface and keeps sightlines across the table clear. With the Oval you have more freedom, since the shade itself takes so little height; with the Ø 600 or Ø 900 sphere, measure the whole drop first, including the canopy and the length of cord you intend to use.

• One sphere, round table. A single Ø 300 or Ø 450 makes a tight halo, which suits a round table and a conversation of four.
• Three at staggered heights. Slaatto intended a cluster hung at staggered heights to read as a starry sky, and a long table or a stairwell is where that idea lands.
• Low ceilings. Choose the Oval. It is the version made for the situation, and its bottom opening compensates for the shallower body.
• Stair voids. Hang high and let the pattern be read from the landing as well as from below. Our notes on designer lighting for small apartments cover the tighter version of the same problem.

If you want geometry at a larger scale

Patera is not the only Louis Poulsen pendant to build its light out of a polyhedral frame. The OE Quasi Pendant Light, designed by the artist Olafur Eliasson in 2019, sets a floating polycarbonate dodecahedron inside a rigid aluminium icosahedron measuring 755 x 896 x 755 mm. Twelve LEDs embedded at the frame's inner vertices feed light guides that run along the edges, and those edges illuminate a matt white central reflector, so the light leaving the fitting is spherical and free of glare even at eye level. It draws 118 W in 2700 K or 3000 K, dims over Dali or wireless Bluetooth, and is built from 90 per cent recycled aluminium with a structure meant to come apart again for repair or recycling. At 46.7 kg it asks a great deal more of a ceiling than a Patera does.

Between them the two Pateras answer most ceilings: the sphere where there is height to fill, the Oval where there is not, and the cell pattern doing the same quiet work in both. To see how they sit among the rest of the Danish and European hanging lights, browse the full Pendant Lamps collection.