FLOS (USA)

We love Flos. They continually put fourth unique and outstanding designs and continue to produce their amazing classics that have been in their collection for decades. Their very recent collaboration with Michael Anastassiades is one of the best lighting design collaborations with a contemporary designers in recent years. Their price is certainly commensurate with their quality and we find their services to be top notch as well.

Propongo nei miei progetti di interni, con grande soddisfazione mia e dei miei clienti, i prodotti FLOS, per la grande qualità del design e dei materiali, per lo spirito di innovazione dei nuovi progetti e la genialità dei grandi classici del design tutt'ora prodotti. Un'eccellenza del Made in Italy che non può non essere presa in considerazione dai progettisti di tutto il mondo. I propose in my interior projects, with great satisfaction for me and my customers, FLOS products, for the great quality of design and materials, for the spirit of innovation of new projects and the genius of the great design classics still produced. Excellence of Made in Italy that should be taken into account by designers from around the world.

I bought a Flos lighting product and that purchase certainly stirred my emotions: the main emotion that I felt was a sense of having been ripped off for paying a high price for a defective and substandard product. My emotions were further stirred when Flos refused to honor the warranty on the defective product. In summary, my experience with Flos lighting products leads me to conclude that Flos sells substandard products that are promoted by marketing hype and refuses to honor the warranty when products are defective. I bought a Flos All Light Wall Sconce. As you can see from the product markings in the attached photos, Flos labels the All Light as a "Type 1 Outdoor" fixture. Furthermore, at the time that i purchased the fixture, Flos advertised the All Light as an outdoor fixture. I bought the fixture and installed it outdoors. When I bought the All Light, it was opal white in color. In less than one year, while the All Light was still under the Flos warranty, the fixture had yellowed from exposure to the sun (from the photos of the fixture you can see where the fixture yellowed versus the covered portions of the fixture that remained white). When I contacted Flos to request a replacement, Flos refused to provide one unless I paid them nearly $250. Of course, I refused; I had used the All Light in a manner that was consistent with the way that Flos advertised the fixture, and under terms of the warranty, they should have replaced the defective fixture. But Flos refused to do so. Each person can make their own decisions about whether they want to deal with companies like Flos, but my review of the Flos All Light is that it was made using polycarbonate. As I have come to learn from this experience, the problem with polycarbonate materials is that they tend to yellow from exposure to UV. A competent maker of lighting fixtures would almost certainly know that you have to UV stabilize polycarbonates to prevent them from yellowing in response to UV exposure. In fact, you see many makers advertise that the polycarbonate in their outdoor fixtures is "UV stabilized". Now, maybe Flos didn't know about this tendency, but from what I have read, the tendency of polycarbonate materials to yellow from exposure to UV is apparently a phenomenon that has been known since at least the 1980's; so it is hard for me to believe that a presumably "amazing lighting brand" like Flos would somehow not know about this fact. However, if they did know, yet still advertise the Flos All Light as being suitable for outdoor use, such promotion would constitute consumer fraud. To add insult to injury in my case, Flos refused to honor the warranty when I requested replacement of the defective product. Maybe Flos refused to provide a replacement because all that they could have offered me was another defective product... But maybe they truly never discovered that polycarbonates are susceptible to yellowing in response to UV exposure when they were presumably doing of of their "product engineering"; in which case, one can only wonder about the competence of the people at Flos the next time they want to spend thousands of dollars on a Flos lighting fixture.