Meet HelenBilt
HelenBilt is a custom lighting company whose work lives at the intersection of raw, natural materials and luxe modernity. Crafted in Helen Gifford’s Sag Harbor studio on the East End of Long Island, she’s been featured in publications from The New York Times to Architectural Digest France.
What sets a HelenBilt lighting project apart isn't just the finished piece. It's the way she thinks. British born, raised in Brunei and Montreal, and educated at Parsons School of Design, Helen brings a genuinely global sensibility to every client engagement allowing the interiors to feel intentional and alive, not assembled.
Helen is best known for designing lighting that lives alongside significant and valued art. She understands scale, tension, and negative space the way a sculptor does, not just a fabricator. If you have a serious collection, or want your lighting to feel as considered as the art you've chosen, that distinction matters.
WHAT MAKES HELEN DIFFERENT?
MADE BY HAND
Always Custom
Every piece, including her signature Urchin, Concord, and Vidro series, is designed, built, and curated by hand in Sag Harbor. When you commission a HelenBilt piece, you're not selecting from a catalog. You're beginning a conversation with a designer who will use everything she knows about your space, your collection, and your life to make something that couldn't exist anywhere else.
ONE-OF-A-KIND
Residential Design
For residential clients, that means lighting that doesn't just illuminate. It shifts how a room feels at different times of day, anchors a living space around its best features, and holds its own next to furniture and finishes you've invested in carefully.
CREATIVE UNIQUE
Retail and Restaurants
Helen's ability to work across European and American design culture is a practical asset. She understands how light shapes a customer's experience, dwell time, and perception of quality, and she builds that understanding into every fixture and placement decision from the start.
IN THE PRESS
HelenBilt's work has been recognized in national and international publications across design, shelter, and lifestyle media, including Interior Design, Metropolitan Home, House and Garden, The New York Times, Architectural Digest France, MAP Magazine Australia, and shelter publications in Germany, Greece, and Holland.
Select Press:
Behind the Hedges, April 2020
Palm Beach Illustrated, March 2017
Cottages & Gardens, June 2011
I hope you will reach out if you need help with your project. I would love ot connect to hear about your vision and how we could work together.
Best,