How a backlit frame is built
A Lilly Lights frame looks, at first glance, like a picture frame. It isn't. Underneath the textile surface sits a small, considered piece of engineering — five distinct layers, each doing a specific job.
The first layer is the aluminium profile. We use a slim extrusion, roughly 30 mm deep, with an internal channel machined along all four inner edges. That channel is what accepts the silicone bead sewn into the print. Aluminium is chosen for two reasons: it is dimensionally stable through temperature changes, and it conducts heat away from the LED array so nothing ever runs warm to the touch.
The second layer is the LED array itself — full-surface, not edge-lit. Edge-lit panels rely on light bouncing across the back and out through the diffuser, which almost always produces visible hot spots and darker corners. A full-surface array places LEDs on a uniform grid across the entire back of the frame, so the light emerges genuinely edge to edge.
The third layer is the diffuser. This is a thin acrylic sheet with a micro-textured surface that scatters the LED light into a soft, even wash. Without it you would see individual points of light through the textile; with it, the whole surface reads as a single source. The diffuser is where a lot of the perceived quality of a frame lives, and it's the part most cheap backlit displays skip.
The fourth layer is the driver. Ours is a slim, quiet unit tucked behind the frame, with the cable exit specified at the time of order — bottom-left, bottom-right, top-left or top-right — so it disappears into your wiring. Dimmable frames use a compatible in-line dimmer that gives smooth, flicker-free control down to about five percent.
The fifth and final layer is the print — a Silicone Edge Graphic on 200 gsm textile. A fine silicone bead is sewn along all four edges, and that bead tucks into the aluminium channel with a firm push. No tools, no tension bars, no glue. You can change a print in about a minute, and the surface stays perfectly flat because the tension is distributed evenly around all four sides.
Put together, these five layers give you a frame that is thin enough to sit close to the wall, cool enough to run all evening, quiet enough to forget, and simple enough to reprint whenever you want to change the room.
It is, we think, the right amount of engineering. Enough to make the light behave. Not so much that the object stops being a piece of art.
