DE20121666U1 - Item of furniture with illuminated panel includes lights with equipment varying brightness, illumination intensity and color mix - Google Patents

Abstract

The illuminants (150) comprises one or more LEDs, SMD-LEDs or LCDs. Devices are included to change the brightness, illumination intensity and/or color mix.

Description

Dipl.-Chem. E.L. FRITZ Dr. Dipl.-Phys. R. BASFELD Dipl.-Ing. J. GRAEFE Patent attorneys

M. HOFFMANN

B. HEIN Attorneys at Law

Ostentor 9 59757 Arnsberg GM 02/133 06.12.2002/SI

Mister

Thomas Emde Friedberger Landstrasse

60389 Frankfurt/Main Mr.

Heinrich Robert Pohl Robert-Bosch-Strasse

50769 Cologne

•piece of furniture"

The present invention relates to a piece of furniture comprising at least one light-emitting surface made of at least one plate-shaped element, wherein the plate-shaped element is assigned at least one illuminant which emits light from the front side into the plate-shaped element, wherein this light is emitted as scattered light over the surface of the plate-shaped element approximately at a right angle to the direction of incidence.

A piece of furniture of the type mentioned is described in DE PS 459 820. This piece of furniture is a reading table with a glass plate arranged underneath an opening panel, into which light is introduced from the front via a lamp arranged next to the glass plate.

When the flap above the glass plate is opened, light is emitted across the surface of the glass plate, creating lighting for reading a text, for example. The use of ordinary glass as a light guide has the disadvantage that particles present in the glass due to the coloring lead to excessive light losses. If you want to achieve a high light output, you have to use special high-quality decolorized glass when using glass plates as light guides, which is relatively expensive. In the reading table mentioned above, the glass plate illuminated on the front is illuminated purely for the purpose of enabling reading. However, there is no idea of illuminating an entire piece of furniture consisting of plate-shaped elements in order to achieve effect lighting or to contribute to the general lighting in the room.

It is also known from the state of the art to use plastic plates, e.g. made of acrylic or similar plastics, as light guides and to introduce the light at the front and then to emit the light as scattered light over the surface of the plastic plate by appropriately processing the surface. This principle is described, for example, in the US magazine "Modern Plastics" Vol.

23, No. 12, August 1946, pages 123 to 127 by Henry Pearson. The use of plate-shaped elements, which are virtually self-luminous, for the construction of pieces of furniture is not described in this document. The lighting sources used there are mainly incandescent lamps, which are far too large and consume too much energy, so that they cannot be considered for use in illuminating plate-shaped elements that are part of a piece of furniture.

The object of the present invention is to create a piece of furniture of the type mentioned at the beginning, which has a self-luminous character and can be used overall for room lighting or effect lighting with a variety of lighting effects, with low energy consumption of the light source(s).

The solution to this problem is provided by an inventive piece of furniture of the type mentioned at the outset with the characterizing features of the main claim. According to the invention, at least one LED, SMD-LED, LCD or the like, preferably a number of such illuminants, is provided as the illuminant, and that devices are provided to change the brightness or illuminance and/or the color mixture of the illuminant(s). The illuminants modified according to the invention make it possible to use relatively thin plate-shaped elements for the construction of the piece of furniture and to introduce light into them at the front by means of illuminants with very small dimensions, whereby the illuminant is practically not perceived by the observer as a discrete point-shaped light source, but rather the plate-shaped elements, into which the light is emitted at the front and which emit the light as scattered light over their surface, have an overall luminous effect. Furthermore, by using the illuminants mentioned in the claim, it is possible to control them electronically in order to change the brightness, illuminance and/or the color mixture of the illuminant(s).

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to achieve various lighting effects. This enables the piece of furniture to be used as a design element in a variety of ways in a previously unknown form. The light color of these lamps can be changed using relatively simple means, e.g. through electronic control. The lamps can be switched on or off or dimmed as required. For example, the lamps can switch on gradually as the amount of daylight entering a room decreases, or the lamps can be controlled via sensors such as motion detectors or the like when a person enters the room in which the piece of furniture is located or approaches the piece of furniture. It is also possible to use a time-dependent on or off mode, which can be used, for example, for pieces of furniture in presentation rooms, shop windows or museums.

The application of the invention is not limited to individual free-standing pieces of furniture, but can also be considered for built-in furniture, e.g. kitchen built-in elements or living room or hallway built-in cupboards. The application of the invention can also be considered, for example, for loudspeaker boxes, exhibition stands and the like.

The invention is also applicable to other furniture-like fittings in buildings, but also, for example, in ships, trains, aircraft, etc., i.e. in interior fittings in general.

The inventive idea takes into account the fact that in today's world, people are surrounded by many different types of screens, such as computer screens, television screens, etc., and thus find self-illuminating surfaces everywhere in their environment. The inventive solution differs from the conventional furniture light, which emits light at specific points, in that the piece of furniture emits light as a whole, i.e.

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presented as a self-luminous object without the viewer identifying a single light source.

Particularly interesting within the scope of a preferred variant of the invention is the creation of self-luminous colored objects, which make it possible to coordinate them with other colored design elements in the room, e.g. wallpaper, curtains, carpets, other non-luminous pieces of furniture.

In the context of the present invention, LEDs are preferably used as lighting sources to illuminate the light-emitting surfaces. The invention makes use of the fact that LEDs take up very little space, consume very little energy, can emit white or colored light in a wide variety of colors and also have a very long service life that was previously unattainable. LEDs have the further advantage as lighting sources that they can be individually controlled digitally via a so-called DMX control. This allows the intensity of each individual light source to be changed, as well as its color and the color mix of the emitted light as a whole. In addition, each individual light source can be controlled in time via this DMX control, for example either according to fixed time specifications or depending on other existing light sources, depending on the influence of daylight, etc.

This enables a programmed temporal and colour change of the light and thus of the atmosphere of the living space.

Preferably, according to the invention, the plate-shaped elements that are used as surfaces of the quasi self-illuminating piece of furniture are held in one or more part profile frames, whereby preferably the light source(s) is covered by these or other profile frames or a similar cover towards the room, so that the existing light source appears to the observer on the one hand as

light source is not visible and on the other hand glare is avoided.

Plastic plates, such as acrylic plates or similar materials, which can be opaque, can be used as plate-shaped elements. The light-emitting surfaces of these plate-shaped elements can, for example, be printed with a dot grid in order to achieve the desired scattering effect. In any case, the light from the lamp is emitted from the front side or the edge of the plate-shaped element into it and is deflected there essentially at right angles and the light is emitted as scattered light over the surface of the plate-shaped element predominantly at right angles to the direction of incidence.

When, in the context of the present invention, we refer to plate-shaped elements which have light-emitting surfaces, this does not necessarily mean that these are flat plate-shaped elements. Rather, they can also be curved. The use of such curved light-emitting surfaces increases the design possibilities when creating pieces of furniture according to the invention.

The plate-shaped elements used according to the invention can be made of acrylic glass or similar plastics with comparable properties or, if necessary, also of glass and can be processed, e.g. printed or etched, in such a way that when the light source is switched on, the desired light-scattering effect is achieved and the plate-shaped element then appears luminous and does not allow visibility. When the light source is not switched on, however, the surface of the plate-shaped element can appear transparent, e.g. by printing the aforementioned dot grid with only a low density, so that when the light source is switched off, you have a piece of furniture with elements that appear to be glass.

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Instead of LEDs, you can also use self-luminous foils or LCD technology as light sources.

The light-emitting plate-shaped elements or self-luminous films can also be mounted in front of load-bearing parts of the furniture, e.g. metal sheets or similar, so that the plate-shaped elements themselves are not load-bearing. In the case of self-luminous films, these can also be laminated onto conventional load-bearing furniture parts.

The plate-shaped illuminable elements can be present in a single layer or, if necessary, several plate-shaped elements can be used that lie parallel to one another and spaced apart from one another with a gap between the plate-shaped elements. It is also possible for the plate-shaped elements to lie directly next to one another in multiple layers.

The light-scattering effect is created by either printing, sandblasting, etching, coating, engraving or pasting the surface. The light, which is guided within the plate-shaped element by total reflection, then exits through the surface treated in this way as scattered light over the surface of the plate-shaped element. A similar effect can also be achieved by creating a defective structure inside the plate-shaped element, e.g. by means of a so-called internal engraving using a focused laser beam.

The use of profile frames or similar covers in the areas where the lamps are arranged has the advantage that the lamps are not visible to the viewer, thus enhancing the effect that the furniture is perceived as quasi self-luminous without a discrete light source appearing.

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Furniture items in the sense of the present invention can be furniture for indoor use, but also furniture for outdoor use, such as garden furniture, patio furniture, park furniture and the like. In both cases, it is particularly advantageous if, according to a preferred development of the invention, at least one plate-shaped element has photovoltaic properties. This means that the plate-shaped element is able to absorb incident sunlight and convert it into electricity, for example through solar elements or a corresponding solar collector coating. This electricity can then be stored in an accumulator. This has the advantage that during the day, the daylight falling on the plate-shaped elements generates the energy that is needed in the dark to illuminate the plate-shaped element and make the piece of furniture appear self-luminous. This also results in a decisive further advantage, namely the fact that a cable feed for the power supply of the lamps is no longer necessary. This is an optical advantage and also makes it much easier to relocate such a piece of furniture. This further development is not only applicable to outdoor furniture, but also to indoor furniture, provided that it is located near a window and there is sufficient daylight.

The creation of pieces of furniture that are intended as built-in furniture or built-in elements for buildings or also for boats, aircraft, trains or the like has the advantage that individual aesthetic design options arise, particularly for high-quality items such as luxury yachts.

When applying the invention in the field of interior furniture, the use of the plate-shaped elements according to the invention is in principle possible for furniture of any kind. These can be, for example, tables, cupboards, beds, bedside tables, chairs, sideboards, desks, but

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also phono furniture, loudspeaker boxes, a bench, a cupboard, a chest of drawers, a sofa, an armchair, a stool, a bar stool, a shelf, a standing desk, a mobile partition, a folding screen, a phono cabinet, a video cabinet, a CD stand, a TV table, a footstool, a vase, a flowerpot, a waste bin, a coat rack, a hat rack, an umbrella stand, a desk, a shelf, a washbasin cabinet or bathroom base cabinet, a mirror cabinet, a cosmetic cabinet, a bathroom shelf, a shower shelf, a piece of garden furniture, a piece of kitchen furniture, a piece of children's room furniture, a skirting board.

The features mentioned in the subclaims relate to preferred developments of the solution to the problem according to the invention. Further advantages of the invention emerge from the detailed description below.

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The present invention is described in more detail below using exemplary embodiments with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Fig. 1 shows a first exemplary piece of furniture according to the invention in the form of a table;

Fig. 2 shows a second exemplary piece of furniture according to the invention in the form of a bed;

Fig. 3 shows a third exemplary piece of furniture according to the invention in the form of a cupboard.

Fig. 4 shows another exemplary piece of furniture according to the invention in the form of a phono chest;

Fig. 5 shows another exemplary piece of furniture according to the invention in the form of a desk.

Fig. 6 shows another exemplary inventive

Piece of furniture in the form of a standing desk.

First, reference is made to Fig. 1 and a first embodiment of the invention is described in more detail thereon.

The illustration shows a perspective, schematically simplified, view of a table 160 which has several side walls 161 and a table top 162. According to the invention, the side walls 161 and the table top 162 consist of the light-emitting plate-shaped elements in the form of acrylic plates or the like. Light is irradiated into the front of these acrylic plates via lamps 150 such as LEDs or fluorescent tubes, which is then emitted outwards as scattered light in the direction of the arrow perpendicular to the direction of radiation, so that the impression is created that when the lamp 150 is switched on, the table has illuminated side walls 161 or an illuminated or self-illuminating table top 162. The lamps 150 are covered by profile frames 140, so that the

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The light sources are not visible to the observer from the room. At the same time, these profile frames 140 serve to hold and frame the plate-shaped elements 110 from which the table 160 is constructed. 5

The left corner area of the table 160 in Fig. 1 is shown partially cut away and the plate-shaped element 110 held in the profile frame 140 can be seen better there, as well as the light source 150, which radiates towards the front, i.e. the edge, of the plate-shaped element 110, so that scattered light is emitted perpendicular to the direction of incidence. The plate-shaped elements, e.g. acrylic plates 110, are designed accordingly to produce this scattered light effect, e.g. opaque or they are printed with a dot grid on the surface. To produce colored light, either colored light sources, e.g. LEDs 150, can be used or the plate-shaped elements 110 can also be colored.

Fig. 2 shows a second embodiment according to the invention, in which a bed 180 is constructed as self-illuminating furniture according to the invention with the plate-shaped elements. The bed 180 comprises a headboard 181 and a footboard 182 as well as a lying surface 183. The headboard 181 and footboard 182 can be designed as plate-shaped elements or can be composed of several such plate-shaped elements, which can then be arranged in rows. These plate-shaped elements 110 are put together in a grid pattern and preferably have a rectangular outline and form transverse rows and longitudinal rows, depending on the size of the luminous surface they form. Here too, the plate-shaped elements 110 are held in profile frames 140 and are illuminated by lamps 150 in the form of LEDs or narrow fluorescent tubes, which radiate into the front of the plate-shaped elements 110. The light passes through the surface of the plate-shaped element 110, from which the headboard 181 and the footboard 182 of the bed are constructed, outwards into the

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space and creates the aesthetically sophisticated effect whereby the bed according to the invention appears self-luminous when the light sources are switched on, whereas such a bed appears largely transparent when the light source is not switched on.

Fig. 3 shows a further embodiment of the invention in a simplified schematic representation. Accordingly, a cabinet 170 is constructed from the plate-shaped elements 110 according to the invention. The cabinet 170 comprises cabinet walls 171, 173 constructed in this way, which can consist of one or more such plate-shaped elements 110. The cabinet 170 also has a cabinet door 172, which can also be made self-illuminating from the aforementioned plate-shaped elements 110. A cable 174 is provided for the power supply of the lamps 150, which also establishes a connection to a controller 190. Using this preferably digital controller, the lamps can be controlled individually and their brightness can be changed. It is preferably a so-called DMX controller. It is also possible to change the light color of one or more of the lamps if necessary. A switch 191 is also provided in the embodiment. However, it is also possible to switch the lamps on or off via the control 190 in a predetermined switching rhythm.

Reference is made to Figure 4 below. The illustration shows a schematically simplified view of another embodiment of the invention. In this case, it is a chest-like piece of furniture, in particular a phono chest 200. The basically hollow, cuboid-shaped body

201 is made of wood or plastic or other materials commonly used in furniture construction. The front doors, which can be moved lengthways,

202 consist of plate-shaped elements according to the invention, which are provided with illuminants (not shown in detail) radiating into the front side of these plate-shaped elements.

shown). This illuminates the Phono furniture 200 in the door area, which gives this piece of furniture a special accentuation of the door area.

Figure 5 shows a piece of furniture according to a further embodiment of the invention. In this case, it is a desk 210, which is basically made up of three plate-shaped elements, each of which can be illuminated by lamps shining into the plate-shaped elements at the front according to the principle of the invention. Two of these plate-shaped elements 211, 212 serve as cheeks on which the desk 210 stands. At the top, in the transverse direction, connecting the two cheeks 211, 212 with one another, runs the desk top 213, which also consists of an illuminated plate-shaped element. The profile frames 214 that provide the lamps for the viewer can be seen on both the two cheeks 211, 212 and the desk top 213. By means of appropriate control elements, the lighting means (not visible in Figure 5) can be controlled in such a way that the plate-shaped elements forming the cheeks 211, 212, or the desk top 213 can appear to be illuminated in color, whereby the light color can be changed and further design possibilities arise by illuminating the individual plate-shaped elements in different colors.

Figure 6 shows a piece of furniture according to a further variant of the invention. In this case, it is a standing desk 220, which is also constructed from the plate-shaped elements according to the invention. The illustration shows that one can optionally use a single plate-shaped element 221, which consists of a translucent, suitably deformable plastic and can be deformed, i.e. bent into radii, to produce a standing desk 220 in the design form shown. As can be seen, the standing desk has a foot part 222, a

connected middle part 223 which projects upwards at a steep angle and an upper part 224 which is connected to it and which merges into a support part 225 in an approximately hairpin-shaped bend. In order to ensure stability, a support web 226 is provided on the foot part 222 and for stiffening there is a stiffening web 227 under the upper part 224 and in the area of the middle part 223.

Claims (12)

1. Piece of furniture comprising at least one light-emitting surface made of at least one plate-shaped element, wherein the plate-shaped element is assigned at least one illuminant which radiates light from the front side into the plate-shaped element, wherein this light is emitted as scattered light over the surface of the plate-shaped element approximately at a right angle to the direction of incidence, characterized in that at least one LED, SMD-LED, LCD or the like, preferably a number of such illuminants, is provided as the illuminant ( 150 ), and that devices ( 190 ) are provided to change the brightness or illuminance and/or the color mixture of the illuminant(s) ( 150 ). 2. Piece of furniture according to claim 1, characterized in that at least one of the plate-shaped elements is printed, sandblasted, etched, coated, engraved or glued on at least one side to produce a light-scattering effect, or the plate-shaped element has a light-scattering defect structure at least in some areas on the inside. 3. Piece of furniture according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that it has at least in some regions a plurality of parallel, adjacent or spaced-apart plate-shaped elements with light-conducting and light-scattering effects. 4. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that at least one plate-shaped element is printed, sandblasted, etched, coated, engraved or glued at least in regions in order to produce the light-scattering effect in a dot grid, line grid or a similar grid, or has a defective structure produced by means of a laser beam in its interior (laser engraving). 5. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 4, characterized in that a number of lighting means ( 150 ) are provided on a strip-shaped arrangement, this arrangement being fastened at the front side to at least one plate-shaped element ( 110 ) via a frame construction ( 140 ). 6. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that the plate-shaped elements are held in single- or multi-part profile frames ( 140 ). 7. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that the lighting means ( 150 ) are covered by profile frames ( 140 ) or a similar cover towards the room. 8. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 7, characterized in that at least one plate-shaped element has photovoltaic properties, by means of which the current required to operate the lighting means ( 150 ) is preferably generated via incident daylight. 9. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 8, characterized in that control devices and/or sensors are provided which control the lighting means ( 150 ) depending on the incident daylight, depending on a person present in the room and/or according to any program. 10. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 9, characterized in that it is a piece of furniture for outdoor use, in particular a piece of garden furniture. 11. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 9, characterized in that it is a built-in piece of furniture or built-in element intended for installation in a building, boat, aircraft, train or the like. 12. Piece of furniture according to one of claims 1 to 9, characterized in that it is a table, cupboard, bed, bedside table, chair, sideboard, desk, a loudspeaker box, a bench, a cupboard, a chest of drawers, a sofa, an armchair, a stool, a bar stool, a shelf, a standing desk, a mobile partition wall, a folding screen, a phono cabinet, a video cabinet, a CD stand, a TV table, a footstool, a vase, a flowerpot, a waste bin, a coat rack, a hat rack, an umbrella stand, a desk, a shelf, a washbasin cabinet or bathroom base cabinet, a mirror cabinet, a cosmetic cabinet, a bathroom shelf, a shower shelf, a piece of garden furniture, a kitchen furniture, a children's room furniture, a skirting board.