The membrane is the light source, so the wall becomes the fixture. We build backlit panels, luminous headboards, feature walls and onyx-look walls to the outline you draw, not to a panel module.
A luminous wall is a tensioned translucent membrane stretched over a shallow LED cavity built into the wall itself. The face of the wall is the light source. There is no lens, no trim ring, no housing and nothing projecting into the room. Eco Ceiling fabricates and installs these across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. We size each panel to the architecture instead of to a module, and we bend the perimeter frames on our own CNC in Dania Beach, so the lit shape can be a rectangle, an arc, a closed outline, a full-height field or a wall that turns a corner.
A fixture lights a wall. This is the wall. Wall washers graze the surface and show every joint and taping flaw. Sconces put bright spots at eye level. A backlit membrane puts the light on one plane instead of at a point, so there is no lamp or lens to look into, and the same panel can dim, tune from 2700K to 6500K, or run RGBW. It also does something a sconce or a wall washer cannot: the membrane can be printed and lit from behind at the same time, at wall scale and in the outline you drew. That is how a backlit onyx or marble look gets built without a stone slab, without structural backing and without stone lead times.
No lens, no trim ring, no bulb to look into at eye level. The light comes off the whole face of the panel instead of a point. The same panel dims, tunes from 2700K to 6500K, or runs RGBW, on 0-10V, DALI-2 or DMX.
Our own CNC bends the aluminum profiles in Dania Beach. Arcs, radii, closed shapes, full-height fields, walls that wrap a corner. The lit shape follows your elevation instead of being forced onto a tile grid.
The translucent membrane can carry a print. A stone pattern lit from behind gives the backlit onyx look with no slab, no structural backing and no quarry lead time. The same trick works for brand walls and graphics.
The elevations we get asked for most often in South Florida.
Primary suite and hotel guest room headboard walls, dimmed and usually warm, with the bottom edge detailed because this is a wall people touch.
Backlit onyx and stone-look feature walls in lobbies, bars and reception, plus corporate reception, elevator lobbies and conference room feature walls.
Brand walls, logo walls and backlit product displays, printed and lit as one tensioned face instead of assembled out of modules.
Spa, wellness and bathroom feature walls, and restaurant and bar back walls where the surface itself carries the light.
Build order, back to front.
We do not stretch onto a finished wall. We build or confirm a box. Studs or furring set the depth, then the back plane gets sheathed and painted flat white. That white back plane is not cosmetic. It is the second bounce that fills the space between LED rows, and leaving it grey or bare is the fastest way to get a striped wall. Depth is set by the design guidance below, not by whatever framing happens to be there.
Drivers, dimming modules and any DALI or DMX gear sit outside the cavity in a place a person can actually reach: a closet, above a cabinet, behind a hinged access panel in the adjacent room. We coordinate that location on the drawing set before framing starts, because it is the one decision that cannot be corrected later without opening the wall. From the driver forward, everything behind the membrane is 24V low voltage.
24V constant voltage strip mounted to aluminum bar or plate, never directly to drywall or wood. The aluminum is the heat path. Rows run at a set pitch, the first row is held off the frame so the perimeter does not go dark, and feeds come back to the driver as home runs so one strip failure does not take the whole panel down with it.
This is where the shape happens. AP-212 and AP-213 LuxForm profiles carry standing and floating lit forms. AP-213 comes in 13 ft 1-1/2 in (4000 mm) stock with 8 in and 4.5 in profile heights, bends into U, C and O shapes, and combines for large architectural forms. AP-301, AP-302 and AP-302-W cove profiles handle perimeter and reveal conditions, AP-302-W at 2 in by 1 in. AP-305, AP-306 and AP-307 give mini, midi and maxi linear slots when the wall wants a line of light rather than a field. AP-216 handles floating shapes. All extruded 6063 aluminum, white powder coat or mill finish, 6.5 ft stock on most profiles. Curves and closed outlines are bent on our CNC before the frame ever reaches the site.
Translucent PVC is cut and welded to the panel geometry in our Dania Beach shop, delivered to site, warmed until pliable, hooked into the harpoon channel and tensioned. As it cools it pulls itself flat. On acoustic walls we use CLIPSO knit polyester instead, roughly 230 g/m2, clipped in cold and dry with no heat at all, seamless to 16 ft 8 in. One thing to be clear about: the 42.0% transmission figure on this page was measured on the translucent PVC membrane, not on CLIPSO. We hold no light transmission test on the acoustic fabric. If you want a wall that is acoustic and backlit at the same time, we build a mockup and you look at it before it goes in the drawing set.
The membrane is the access panel. It releases from the harpoon channel and goes back in and re-tensions, so a strip swap or a driver swap does not damage adjacent finishes. We hand over the panel layout and the driver location at closeout so whoever opens it in year six knows where to look.
Every number below is our shop standard, taken from field installs. It is not laboratory data. Use it to draw with, then confirm it on a mockup.
The governing relationship is depth to LED row spacing. At 1:1, meaning cavity depth equal to the row pitch, a translucent membrane reads even. We treat 1:1 as the floor and go to 1.5:1 for tunable white or RGBW, because those strips carry separate diodes of different colors that need more distance to mix before they hit the membrane.
Practical translation: 3 in minimum cavity, 4 in comfortable, 5 to 6 in for tunable white, RGBW, or any single lit field over about 8 ft. Below 2 in you will see the strips no matter what you do, and the right answer at that depth is a linear slot, not a backlit field.
4 in rows in a shallow cavity, 6 in at 4 in of depth, 8 in only when you have 6 in or more behind the membrane. Hold the first row 2 to 3 in off the inside face of the frame. A dark band around the perimeter is the most common defect on a backlit wall and the cause is always the same: the last row was set flush to the frame instead of half a pitch away from it.
Cavity too shallow for the pitch. Grey or unpainted back plane. First row jammed against the frame. Strip laid on wood or drywall instead of aluminum, which shows up months later as a warm, color-shifted stripe. Mixed strip batches in one panel, where two reels of the same part number do not match once they are behind a diffuser.
Keep a single 24V strip run to about 16 ft before the far end starts reading dim. Longer panels get fed from both ends, or fed at the center for roughly 32 ft. We size drivers to about 80% of rated load and keep them within about 25 ft of the panel. Beyond that the secondary run needs heavier gauge wire. That is a coordination item, not a field improvisation, and final circuiting, wire sizing and driver location are confirmed with the electrical engineer of record.
Strip on aluminum, always. Let the top of a tall cavity breathe. A closed warm cavity shortens LED life and drifts color, and it shows at the top of the panel first because that is where the heat collects. On a full-height wall this matters more than it does on a ceiling.
A ceiling sits 9 or 10 ft away and gets looked at flat. A wall gets read from 3 ft, at eye level, often at a grazing angle. Every tolerance tightens. If the panel will be viewed from closer than 4 ft, add an inch of depth or tighten the pitch one step. Set the frame within 1/8 in over 10 ft, because grazing light across a vertical surface reveals substrate error that a ceiling would have hidden.
People put their hands on walls. In circulation space we set the lit field above 36 in from finished floor, or protect the bottom edge with a reveal, a rail or glass. Matte finish forgives fingerprints, gloss does not. Decide this at design stage rather than at punch list.
Ink reduces transmission wherever it is dense, so a dark stone vein goes darker with light behind it. That contrast is exactly what makes the onyx look convincing, and it also means a heavily printed panel needs more LED behind it than a plain one. We do not estimate this. We print a section, light it, and look at it before the panel goes into production.
Where a weld is unavoidable on a large panel, we place it on a line the architecture already has, aligned to a mullion, a reveal or a panel joint. A weld line can read under backlight, so it gets located deliberately rather than landing in the middle of the lit field.
A luminous wall next to a glazed elevation competes with daylight and can look flat at noon and correct at night. If the wall faces glass, mock it up in the actual room and look at it at the actual hour the client cares about.
Allow 4 to 6 in from finished wall face for a typical backlit field, plus the frame profile. Tell us early if you only have 3 in and we will tell you honestly what it will look like.
The lit field sits behind the bed, dimmed, usually on the warm end of the range. The bottom edge gets detailed because this is a wall people lean on.
Lobbies, bars and reception. A printed translucent membrane lit from behind, with no slab, no structural backing and no quarry lead time.
Logos, graphics and display backdrops printed onto the membrane and lit as one tensioned face rather than assembled from modules.
Low light levels, tunable white or RGBW where the room runs on a scene. Matte finish where hands and water are in play.
The back bar becomes the source instead of being lit by something aimed at it, so there is no lamp or lens at eye level behind the bartender.
Full-height fields and closed outlines in spaces with no daylight, where one wall carries the identity and the light at the same time.
No, and we will not send something we do not have. There is no LM-79, LM-80 or IES file for this assembly.
What we do hold is an independent light transmission test report on the membrane from Poznan University of Technology, method per CIE 130-1998: 42.0% diffused on the translucent film, 70.5% on transparent. Lighting designers model the wall as a diffuse emitting plane using the strip manufacturer’s own published data together with our 42.0% figure. For anything that has to survive a submittal, we build a mockup and you measure it in the actual room. Most designers prefer that to a number that was never taken in a wall.
Write what you need us to meet, and we will tell you straight whether we can evidence it. What we hold is ASTM E84 on the translucent PVC membrane, per finish, on white specimens: gloss FSI 5 / SDI 300, matte FSI 10 / SDI 300, satin FSI 15 / SDI 250. The laboratory assigned no classification, and the specimens were not mounted per ASTM E2573. That is membrane data, not an assembly.
Those figures cover the PVC membrane only. They do not cover the CLIPSO acoustic fabric, which is a different material from a different manufacturer, so ask us before you write the acoustic option into a fire spec.
To be explicit about the gaps, so nobody finds out at submittal: we hold no NFPA 701, no NFPA 286 and no NFPA 265, no ASTM E2573 mounted-assembly test, no UL 2043 rating, and no Florida Product Approval or Miami-Dade NOA for this assembly.
On plenums the answer is no. The smoke developed figures on the data we do hold are far higher than plenum use would need, so on this data the answer is no. If the wall cavity is part of a return path, that needs a ducted return or a different product. We would rather tell you at design development than at submittal.
Allow 4 to 6 in from the finished wall face for a typical backlit field, plus the frame profile. 3 in is our practical minimum and it constrains the LED pitch. Below 2 in you will see the strips through the membrane regardless of what we do, and at that depth the honest recommendation is a linear light slot rather than a backlit field. Tunable white and RGBW want 5 to 6 in because the individual diodes are different colors and need more distance to blend.
The membrane is the access panel. It releases from the harpoon channel, the strip or driver gets replaced, and the same membrane goes back in and re-tensions. No cutting, no patching, no repainting. This works because the drivers were put somewhere reachable on day one, which is why we push that decision into the drawing set before framing. We hand over the panel layout and driver location at closeout.
They are two different builds and it is worth knowing why before you draw one. Acoustic walls use CLIPSO micro-perforated fabric so sound passes through an invisible perforation into absorption behind it. Backlit walls use translucent PVC over an LED cavity.
You can absolutely have both on one elevation as separate zones, or a backlit panel framed inside an acoustic field, and we detail that regularly. What we will not do is publish an absorption number for a lit panel. We hold no ASTM C423 or NRC data of our own, and any acoustic figure has to come from the fabric manufacturer.
Yes, and the reason is the contrast rather than the brightness. Ink blocks light where it is dense, so the dark veining goes darker with the LED behind it and the pale field glows, which is exactly what real backlit stone does. It also weighs nothing next to a slab, needs no structural backing, and does not carry stone lead times. We print a section and light it before the panel goes to production, so you approve the real thing rather than a proof on paper.
Ask and it goes out, usually within one business day.
These are the documents a specifier asks for that we cannot hand over today. They stay listed and empty on purpose. If any of them is a project requirement, tell us early and we will say plainly whether we can get it or whether the project needs a different material.
A panel manufacturer sells tiles, panels and modules that get assembled into a surface, so the wall turns into a grid with joints and module lines you have to design around. We bend the frame on our own CNC in Dania Beach to the outline the architect actually drew, and deliver the wall as one tensioned face that can also be printed and backlit at the same time. One drawing set, one crew, Florida lead times, and a mockup you can stand in front of before you commit.
Profile cross-sections, dimensions and the full color chart live in the technical library. CAD files are sent on request, usually within one business day.
View system
Send the elevation and the cavity depth you have to work with. We come back with a build approach, a budget and a lead time the same day, and a mockup when the finish, the pitch or the print has to be proven first.
Share a few details and our team will follow up within one business day.
