The sustainable lighting brands in this guide will help you brighten up any room in your home while supporting artisan crafts — and without leaving a heavy footprint on the planet.
For how we define sustainable lighting, scroll down below beneath the brands!
Where to Find Sustainable Lighting
This guide features an already vetted, pre-curated roundup of sustainable lighting brands that are creating earth-minded, responsible, and beautifully designed sustainable lights.
Hopefully you’ll find a lighting fixture or lamp you’ll love — there are some really incredible and inspiring brands in here!
Looking for more furnishings? Check out our sustainable furniture guide here!
Note that this guide includes affiliate links. As always, all brands meet strict standards for sustainability and are brands we love — and that we think you’ll love too!
1. Lanna Passa
Best for: artisan-made bamboo floor lamps
This Thailand-based shop showcases the artistry and craftsmanship of ethnic hill tribe communities like the Hmong and Lisu. Lanna Passa is committed to sustaining traditional crafts while sourcing from local villages and supporting hill tribe communities. In addition to single rattan lamp shades, Lanna Passa sells string light sets for weddings, festivals, and other outdoor venues.
I have the trio of bamboo floor lamps in my living room and love the cozy, grounded ambience it adds to the space. (Though the bamboo is an open weave, so if you’re sensitive to light, you might prefer a fully covered lamp shade.)
Conscious Qualities: Sustaining Cultural Crafts, Natural Materials, WOC-Owned Business
Price Range: $45 – $420
Shipping: Global
2. Bicycle Glass
Best for: hand-blown recycled glass pendants
Dedicated to transforming “trash to treasure”, Bicycle Glass creates beautiful sustainable lighting out of locally-sourced recycled glass. I was blown away by the detail in their lighting on their product pages, though I think I’d keep to indoor lighting as I might be nervous about the durability of the recycled glass outdoors.
Bicycle Glass’ lighting is all made locally in Minnesota by artisans for each customer. And they deliver —the shop has a 4.9/5 star rating on Etsy with hundreds of reviews.
Conscious Qualities: 100% Recycled Glass, Local Production, Made to Order Model
Price Range: $250 – $1900
Shipping: USA
3. Thai Home Shop
Best for: bamboo pendant lights
Thai Home Shop’s eco-friendly lighting is individually handcrafted in local artisan workshops in Thailand using generations-old crafts. This small business sources their earth-minded materials — like bamboo and rattan — locally in Thailand at a fair price to support their community.
Their pendants add a cozy touch to any living space, and I personally love how a bamboo table lamp has added warmth to my bedroom.
Conscious Qualities: Natural Materials, Locally-Sourced and Produced, Supports Cultural Preservation
Price Range: $40 – $399
Shipping: Global
Use code CONSCIOUSSTYLE for 15% off!
4. Modern Gesture @ 54kibo
Best for: unique architectural ceiling lights
The one-of-a-kind Modern Gesture lighting from 54Kibo truly stands out with its intricate details and unique shape. Based in South Africa, Modern Gesture creates African-inspired, contemporary lighting made from recycled wood offcuts right in their own Cape Town workshop.
And while the selection is more limited than other options on the list, I love that the designs have been inspired by Ndebele African design jewelry — showing how interconnected fashion and interior design can be.
Conscious Qualities: Eco Materials, Traceable Production, Black-Owned Brand & Retailer
Price Range: $428 – $598
Shipping: Contiguous USA
5. Schoolhouse
Best for: well-crafted lighting with character
I have a weakness for mid-century modern interiors and with everything from mushroom lamps and pop lights to linear chandeliers and brass sconces, Schoolhouse has mastered the art of retro-inspired lighting.
The brand’s heirloom-quality lighting is designed to transcend trends and crafted by skilled makers in their Portland-based factory. The brand sources their components responsibly from domestic and international sources.
Conscious Qualities: Made Ethically in Portland, Timeless Design, Lasting Quality
Price Range: $149 – $999
Shipping: Contiguous USA (inquiry for international shipping rates)
6. GOODEE
Best for: ethically artisan made lighting by vetted makers
GOODEE is a mecca for all things artisan-made, including sustainable lighting fixtures, table lights, lampshades and even lightbulbs. You can find both elegant and bold sustainable lighting options made from materials like elephant grass, natural straw, and durable aluminum.
My personal favorites are the colorful woven lamps from Baba Tree made from recycled PET bottles.
Conscious Qualities: Artisan-Made, Ethical Production Practices, Black-Owned, Natural or Recycled Materials
Price Range: $189 – $3000+
Shipping: USA & Canada
7. Graypants
Best for: contemporary design-forward lighting
Who knew recycled cardboard could look so chic? Graypants is an eco-friendly lighting brand that creates striking pendant lights (which they call “scraplights”) from repurposed cardboard. The sustainable lighting is manufactured in the US.
Like Bicycle Glass, pieces are made to order, so build in some lead time rather than expecting immediate shipping.
Conscious Qualities: Recycled Materials, Responsible Manufacturing, Made to Order
Price Range: $385 – $10,000+
Shipping: Contiguous USA
8. Healthier Homes
Best for: natural non-toxic lighting
The sustainable lighting on Healthier Homes meets high standards in both sustainability and non-toxic materials.
The pendants, sconces, table lamps, chandeliers and other lighting fixtures are made with natural materials (like coconut shells) or durable materials (like metal) tested for toxic substances. Another element I love about Healthier Homes’ lighting is how the organic shapes soften the room.
Conscious Qualities: Natural, Non-Toxic Materials
Price Range: $84 – $1140
Shipping: Contiguous USA | contact for international shipping
9. Chairish
Best for: vintage lighting
Chairish has a treasure trove of sustainable lighting with their carefully curated collection of gently used, vintage, and antique pieces. Uncover items like a pink floral crystal globe beaded chandelier or a 1920s Italian blown-glass “harp” chandelier with twisted glass.
With prices going in the several tens of thousands, the secondhand lighting from Chairish is not your thrift store lighting — and is certainly outside of my budget — but if you’re excited to invest in an heirloom piece, this is the spot.
Conscious Qualities: Vintage & Used Lighting
Price Range: $15 – $72,000 (looks like a typo, but yes that’s really the variance of prices on the platform!)
Shipping: USA & Canada
What is Sustainable Lighting?
Ok so what exactly is sustainable lighting anyway?
The most obvious is using lower impact, efficient LED lightbulbs. LEDs that are ENERGY STAR-qualified (a US government backed standard for energy efficiency) use just a fraction (20%–25%) of the energy and last 15 to 25 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs. (Source)
But let’s go beyond the lightbulbs and talk about the lighting fixtures themselves.
Materials
Beyond the bulbs, you can source environmentally and socially-responsible lighting fixtures and lamps. Some materials to look for include:
Reclaimed and Recycled Materials
One of the most sustainable lighting materials to use are those already in existence! Some repurposed materials in lights might include recycled glass or reclaimed wood.
Natural and Locally-Sourced Materials
This might include materials like bamboo, rattan, and sisal grass.
Many artisan lighting brands will source these sorts of materials, and as you’ll see, the material varies based on the region where the artisan groups are based. While bamboo might be the most sustainable and accessible material for one group, sisal grass may be the best material for another.
Durable Heirloom-Quality Materials
While natural materials can be sustainably sourced, they may not always last the test of time the way that more durable materials like copper or infinitely recyclable aluminum do.
There is sort of a tradeoff here because the initial production of metals involves a significant environmental impact due to the mining involved. But, quality-made metal lighting can last for generations if kept up well.
So, if you are going to purchase metal lighting, I recommend sourcing from a high-quality brand that really designs their products to LAST!
Production Practices
Another key element to sustainable lighting is how people and planet-friendly the production practices are.
Here are some questions to ask regarding a brand’s supply chain:
- Does the brand produce lights locally? Does the brand source their materials locally?
- Does the brand state where production takes place? What details do they give?
- What sort of relationship does the brand have with the manufacturing facilities or artisans? Is it a true partnership or does the brand just outsource in a race to the bottom for the cheapest price?
- Does the factory have any certifications or other assurances of its sustainability and ethics?
These are just some starter questions to be asking.
If you can’t find the answers to these questions, don’t be afraid to email the brand and ask — if they are a transparent and responsible brand, they should have no problem answering you honestly.
More Sustainable Home Guides:
Beautiful Ethical Home Decor Brands to Curate a Conscious Space
Your Ultimate Guide to Eco-Friendly & Organic Bedding
21 Best Sustainable Furniture Brands for an Eco Home
The post 9 Best Sustainable Lighting Brands To Brighten Up Your Space appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.
9 Best Sustainable Lighting Brands To Brighten Up Your Space
Last winter, we kept our house at 60 degrees and our electric bill was STILL $280. I’ve been interested in solar for a long time, but on the long list of house projects (especially when you’re restoring a 200 year old house on the historic registry) some are more pressing than others.
But with a few of those major projects wrapping up, and a daunting bill before me, I figured now was the time for a quick google search on solar panels, and let me tell you….. It can be very overwhelming.
Figuring out the rules (cough, cough, historic society), incentives or rebates if applicable, how much it would cost, how much we could save, etc. felt a little like a part-time job. But, one website made it really easy to compare things, and I am happy to be partnering with Aurora Solar to share that site with you.
Because I think you should be able to easily run the numbers on your house without a lot of hassle!
This post is sponsored by Aurora Solar, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
If you’ve ever gotten a solar quote, there’s a good chance that Aurora Solar was involved. Aurora was founded in 2013 after its co-founders spent seven months trying to design a solar energy system using a patchwork of different tools.
Afterall, designing a solar system shouldn’t be harder than actually installing one. So they built software specifically for solar professionals. Today, more than 7,000 solar organizations use Aurora, and more than 20 million solar projects have been designed using the platform. They are also the largest solar software provider in the world. Their software is used by roughly 80% of the top 75 residential solar companies in the U.S.
All of this tech has been primarily used by professional installers to map your roof and then create a proposal, but now Aurora is offering this tech to us to help compare quotes.
So instead of having to call a bunch of different installers, I could use the Aurora Solar Marketplace to understand my solar potential, compare estimates, understand my possible savings, look into battery storage and other home electrification incentives, and map out different financing options.
1. know how much electricity the system will actually produce
Before you even get into the price, make sure you understand what you’re actually being quoted.
Two solar systems can have very different prices because they may not be the same size or produce the same amount of electricity. A cheaper system might simply have fewer panels and offset less of your electric bill.
With Aurora, you can compare solar estimates and see the system size, energy production, and how much electricity the system should offset.
You can also upload your utility bill to get a solar estimate based more closely on your actual energy usage, to make the quote accurate for you instead of a ‘generic household’.
2. understand the solar payback period
Aurora calculates things like payback period and lifetime savings, which makes it much easier to understand the long-term finances.
The solar payback period is basically how long it takes for your estimated savings to make up for what you spent on the system, and this is the number that surprised me most!
One estimate had a payback period of around 7 years, and another was closer to 11 years! Over 25 years, two of the estimates I looked at had almost a $13,000 difference in projected savings.
Of course, these are still projections as electricity rates can change (HELLO 2026) but when you’re trying to compare two options for the same house, knowing that one is projected to pay for itself four years sooner is pretty useful information.
3. look beyond the monthly payment
Depending on the installer, you may be looking at a cash purchase, solar loan, lease, or power purchase agreement.
But thankfully with Aurora you can compare the different financing options side-by-side which makes it a lot easier to see the trade-offs. One option may have a lower upfront cost, another may have a lower monthly payment, and another may give you better long-term savings.
4. find out which solar incentives actually apply to you
The minute you start Googling solar, you can find federal incentives, state incentives, utility programs, rebates, net metering, and a whole bunch of information that may or may not even apply to where you live.
And some of the articles ranking at the top of Google are several years old! (RIP to the federal incentives canceled at the end of 2025.) But, Aurora can account for solar incentives when calculating the cost and savings of a system, including state, local, and utility-specific programs.
I would still double check any incentive or tax benefit you’re planning to use before signing a contract, especially because programs and eligibility can change, but having all the relevant information in the same place makes the research process much less overwhelming.
5. research the installer, equipment, and warranties
Aurora lets you compare solar installers based on things like reviews, reputation, pricing, and financing options, which I think is just as important as the actual quote.
I’d also look closely at what equipment is included. What panels are they using? What kind of inverter? How long are the equipment warranties? Is there also a workmanship warranty from the installer? Who handles repairs if something goes wrong five or ten years from now?
And, I know I’ve said it a million times, but it’s nice to see it side-by-side without having to fill out a bunch of forms and be hounded on the phone just to get an idea of what solar may look like.
The post How to Compare Solar Quotes: What to Look For Before You Choose appeared first on Going Zero Waste.
How to Compare Solar Quotes: What to Look For Before You Choose
Green Living
Sustainability In Your Ear: XPRIZE’s David Babson on Why Climate Grand Challenges Need Buyers, Too
Buyers contracted nearly 30 million tons of durable carbon removal in 2025, more than triple the 2024 total, according to CDR.fyi data reported by Heatmap. About 90% of those purchases came from a single company, Microsoft, and suppliers delivered only about 450,000 tons during the year. That is a sliver of the six to 10 billion tons of removal a year that climate scenarios suggest the world will need by 2050. The technology to pull carbon out of the air works, but the customers needed to scale it remain scarce.
Our guest today, David Babson, is executive vice president of the Energy, Climate, and Nature domain at the XPRIZE Foundation. He calls the slow progress a market failure, because the technology is progressing faster than it is being adopted. Babson previously led MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges initiative and was a program director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E. His portfolio includes XPRIZE Carbon Removal, which drew 1,334 teams and whose participants have raised more than $3.3 billion. In April 2025, Mati Carbon won its $50 million grand prize for spreading crushed basalt on smallholder farms in India, where the rock locks away carbon dioxide. “If people could make money taking carbon out of the air and putting it underground, as opposed to only being able to make money taking it from underground and putting it in the air, we would be in a better place,” Babson says. Mati is weathering the slump in part because its rock dust also improves soil health and crop yields, giving farmers a reason to participate that doesn’t depend on carbon credit prices.
XPRIZE’s answer is to change what winners receive. Babson describes “mixed purses” that pair a cash award with a guaranteed buyer through an advance market commitment, a power purchase agreement, or an offtake contract. In one thought experiment, a carbon removal prize would come with a separate $1 billion fund raised from credit buyers, which qualified teams could draw on as they deliver verified tons. XPRIZE is applying the same thinking to a planned series of fusion energy prizes, pairing technical milestones with market mechanisms to build the supply chain that commercial fusion will require. The same gap between invention and adoption shows up in other XPRIZE competitions. On September 23, XPRIZE Wildfire awarded about $4.55 million from its $11 million purse, with defense contractor Anduril Industries taking first place in autonomous fire response along with a $1 million Lockheed Martin bonus. Babson expects costs to fall as fire agencies adopt the tools and as startups license individual components into cheaper platforms, though underfunded agencies will need a way to buy the first systems. He also notes that the competition left fuel management and ground-based autonomy for future prizes. Earlier this year, program director Andrea Santy told us that field testing had moved ahead of drone regulations. In biodiversity, Limelight Rainforest won $5 million for surveying 100 hectares of tropical forest in und