Having supported many large brands with their retail signage in London – including New Balance, Coca-Cola & Harvey Nichols – Carousel Lights were absolutely delighted to be approached by the brilliant team at Diptyque, who appointed us to do the real neon signage for the launch of their new Orpheon scent in their beautiful store on London’s Bond Street.
Diptyque has put a fresh spin on one of its most recognisable scents with Orphéon Eau de Toilette—a lighter take inspired by the Paris jazz bar that used to sit next to its original Saint-Germain boutique.
The roots of Orphéon go back to the 1960s, when the jazz club next door at 34 Boulevard Saint-Germain became a hangout for artists, writers, and musicians. The brand’s founders were regulars, and the vibe of those nights eventually sparked the creation of the Orphéon Eau de Parfum, which launched in 2021.
From the outset it was clear that traditional real glass neon would be used for this project – ‘the real deal’ as it’s often referred to. The client sent us drawings of each window space so that we could work out how to translate the ORPHEON design and to make it work in real neon across all three windows.
The glass that we used for the design was Cobalt Blue, a beautiful rich and deep blue coloured glass. A benefit of Bromo Blue above other blue neon glasses is that it’s blue-coloured when turned off (as opposed to white, which many colours are).
Carousel Lights scaled up the windows to 100% size, and placed OR in the first window, PHE in the middle window and ON in the 3rd window. It was obviously critical that the text remained the same size, as opposed to filling the space, so the size of the tightest-fitting text set the size that the other two windows matched. This also helped us decide to use 20mm diameter glass to give a beautiful final effect.
Once this placement and sizing was agreed with the client, we started the glasswork to produce all of the neon sections. At the same time, we produced 3 identical 10mm clear polished acrylic panels, each exhibition-grade and measuring 950mm (w) x 1340mm (h). We mocked this up as a proof to send to the client so they could visualise the layout of how each part of the design would look across each of the 3 windows.
On-site, the panels were all suspended into place and the glass mounted to each section before then connecting each of the three elements to it’s own specialist transformer.
The client had a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve and we’re over the moon to have helped them bring this to life.
Date:
14th April 2026