Amber Thompson: Learn more about the designer and maker of the sculptural lights Floc

Amber thompson x hypnos

It's been a pleasure to partner with Amber, bringing her Wool Lights, Floc to the NBF Bed Show, the UK's biggest bed trade exhibition, because she shares our passion for wool. From the materials renewable credentials with a connection to the landscape, to it's natural qualities that provide luxurious comfort. 

Over to Amber, to explain more about her beautiful wool lights, Floc.

what floc MEANS TO me

Written By Amber Thompson

I’m a designer and material researcher, and Floc began from a fascination with one material in particular: British wool.

We are so familiar with wool that I think we sometimes overlook how amazing it is. We tend to associate it with traditional textiles, carpets, clothing and heritage interiors, but I became interested in exploring wool in a completely different way. I wanted to experiment with what happens when you strip away that expectation and allow wool to become something else entirely.

That curiosity led to the development of Floc, sculptural lights made from local British sheep’s wool.

Rather than hiding the material within a conventional product, the wool becomes the product itself. Its softness, texture, irregularity and natural character become an integral part of the design. I wanted to explore wool as an almost intangible material, preserving its softness, volume and natural irregularity to create something that feels almost weightless and atmospheric.

But the more I researched wool, the more fascinated I became by the story behind the material.

I love that it comes from a living animal. A sheep grows its fleece naturally, it is shorn, and the process begins again. It is a renewable material with a connection to the landscape, the farmer and the animal that produced it.

Despite its qualities, British wool can be incredibly undervalued, with farmers receiving very little return for their fleece and, in some circumstances, facing shearing costs that can outweigh its value. This disconnect can mean that wool is treated as a waste product rather than the valuable material that it is.

That contrast stayed with me: how can something so naturally abundant, versatile and beautiful be so undervalued?

It made me want to explore how design could help give wool a new value, taking a material that is familiar but often overlooked and demonstrating its potential in a contemporary context.

Wool has an incredible range of natural properties. It is insulating, durable, breathable and naturally flame resistant, and unlike many synthetic fibres, it comes from a renewable biological source and can biodegrade at the end of its life. I believe there is huge potential for materials like wool to play a greater role in reducing our reliance on synthetic, fossil-fuel-derived materials. But what excites me most isn’t its environmental credentials. It is its story.

I love the idea that you can create a direct connection between the source of a material and the object it eventually becomes. With Floc, I want that journey to be visible, creating a transparent supply chain where you can understand where the wool came from and, ultimately, trace it back to the sheep.

That connection gives an object another layer of meaning. There is something special about knowing that an object began as a fleece on a living animal in the British landscape.

Floc is therefore about more than making lights from wool. It is about questioning how we perceive materials and what we believe they can become.

I want to show British wool in a way that feels unexpected, contemporary, playful, sculptural and relevant to a new generation.

For me, that is where design becomes exciting: taking something familiar, overlooked or undervalued, and giving people a reason to see it differently.

WOOL ELEVATED: Amber thompson x hypnos at the nbf bed show 

At the NBF Bed Show, the UK's biggest bed trade exhibition Hypnos partnered with designer Amber Thompson to bring Floc to the show. Her suspended light sculpture gave wool a new presence: illuminated, richly textured and compelling to view from every angle.