There's a moment in every design movement when someone decides that the constraints are actually the point. When the limitation — the budget, the material, the circumstance — becomes not something to work around, but something to work with. For Graypants, that material was cardboard. And what they did with it quietly changed the conversation around sustainable design.
Founded in Seattle by architects Seth Grizzle and Jonathan Junker, Graypants began not as a lighting company but as a design studio with a problem to solve: how do you build a beautiful, functional lamp when you have almost no budget? The answer, as it turned out, was sitting in the recycling bin.
The Origin of the Scraplight
The story of Graypants is inseparable from the story of the Scraplight — the series of pendants hand-cut from salvaged cardboard that launched the studio into international design consciousness. Working from their Seattle studio in the early 2010s, Grizzle and Junker began experimenting with layering laser-cut cardboard discs into sculptural forms that could diffuse light in warm, organic ways.
The result was stunning in its contradiction: a material associated with packaging and waste, transformed into something that looked like it belonged in a Milan furniture fair. And soon enough, it did. The Scraplights were exhibited internationally, picked up by design-forward retailers across Europe and North America, and became one of those rare objects that design professionals and civilians alike responded to with the same instinct: how did they do that?
The answer is craft. Genuine, methodical, hands-on craft — each piece assembled to order in the studio, with layers of recycled cardboard bonded with non-toxic adhesive and treated with a non-toxic fire retardant. Every lamp is UL certified. Every finish — Natural, Blonde, or White — is a distinct material expression, not a paint coat. The Scraplight isn't sustainable because it markets itself that way. It's sustainable because of the decisions made at every step of the process.
The Scraplight Collection: Iconic Forms, Extraordinary Light
What's remarkable about the Scraplight line is how many distinct personalities emerge from a single material. The cardboard itself is a constant, but the forms Graypants has drawn from it range from intimate to monumental.
The Disc Scraplight Pendant
The Disc is Graypants at its most elemental: a flat, layered disc of recycled cardboard that, when lit from within, radiates a warm 2700K glow through its textured cross-section. Available in five sizes from 16" to 32" wide, it works as a solo statement above a dining table or clustered in multiples for a dramatic, gallery-worthy installation. In Natural, Blonde, or White, it reads differently in every light condition — soft and honeyed in the morning, rich and amber at night.
The Bell Scraplight Pendant
The Bell introduces volume and curve to the Scraplight vocabulary. Its downward-tapering form focuses light with intentionality — ideal for over a kitchen island, a reading chair, or a bedside table that calls for something more considered than a standard pendant. Available in 10" and 16" diameters, it's one of the most versatile pieces in the collection: intimate enough for a nook, substantial enough for a double-height dining room when hung in a cluster.
The Drop Scraplight Pendant
The Drop is where Graypants gets vertical. Its elongated, teardrop silhouette creates a light that draws the eye downward into the glow rather than outward into the room — perfect for corridors, stairwells, or anywhere you want the fixture itself to become a sculptural focal point. In three sizes (18", 22", and 26" heights), it brings drama without bulk.
The Moon Scraplight Pendant
The Moon is perhaps the most poetic form in the Scraplight family. Spherical, full, and luminous, it distributes light omnidirectionally in a way that fills a room rather than spotlighting it. Available in five sizes from 10" to 32" in diameter, the Moon pendant works beautifully as a singular installation in a bedroom or living room, or as part of a clustered ceiling moment at varying heights. It is, in the truest sense, a light that glows rather than illuminates.
Beyond Cardboard: The Expansion of the Graypants Universe
Graypants has never been content to stay in one material. The studio's curiosity — the same impulse that led them to cardboard in the first place — has continued to drive them into new territories: reclaimed plywood, PET felt, brass, ceramic. Each new material is approached with the same rigor: what does it want to do? What does light do through it, around it, because of it?
The Kerflights series, for example, demonstrates what happens when Graypants applies kerf-cutting techniques to FSC-certified plywood — producing pendants, wall sconces, and table lamps that cast hypnotic shadow patterns across walls and ceilings. The Chrona collection explores brass as a precision material, delivering sleek horizontal disc pendants that read as minimal and architectural in equal measure.
And the Ausi Table Lamp — one of the studio's most beloved pieces — brings the Scraplight ethos to a domestic scale.
The Ausi Table Lamp
The Ausi takes the layered cardboard aesthetic and grounds it in a brass frame, creating a table lamp that is simultaneously warm in material, warm in light, and warm in spirit. It's the piece that answers the question design enthusiasts always ask: what do I put on the nightstand, the desk, the reading table — something that looks considered, not purchased? The Ausi, in Natural, Blonde, or White, is that answer.
Why Graypants Matters Now More Than Ever
Sustainability in design has become a complicated word. It's been applied to products that are marginally better than their predecessors, to marketing campaigns more committed to the language of responsibility than the practice of it, to materials that are technically recyclable but practically never recycled.
Graypants cuts through all of that with something simpler: physical evidence. Hold a Scraplight and you are holding recycled material, transformed by human hands, into something that will last for years and illuminate beautifully every day of its life. There is no gap between the claim and the object. The lamp is the argument.
That's why Graypants has maintained such a devoted following in the design community for over a decade. In an era of fast furniture and disposable aesthetics, their work represents a different value system — one where slowing down, choosing carefully, and investing in objects made with intention is not just aesthetically rewarding but genuinely meaningful.
For the LoftModern customer, who already understands that design and ethics don't have to be in tension, Graypants is a natural fit. These are lights for spaces where every choice is deliberate. Where the conversation you have with a guest about that pendant over the dining table is part of the pleasure of owning it.
Shop Graypants at LoftModern
We carry Graypants' full collection at LoftModern — from the iconic Scraplights to the Kerflights series and beyond — because we believe their approach to design represents exactly what modern living should aspire to: beautiful, considered, and made to last.
Whether you're drawn to the layered warmth of the Disc Scraplight, the poetic glow of the Moon pendant, the sculptural drama of the Drop, or the domestic intimacy of the Ausi Table Lamp, you'll find a piece that makes your space — and your conscience — feel exactly right.
Design that leads, not follows. That's Graypants.
Explore the full Graypants collection at LoftModern — and subscribe to our newsletter below for new arrivals, design stories, and exclusive access to studio collaborations.