Lumiere is the build that a lot of you asked us for by name, and today we're retiring it.

After Nocturne did as well as it did, the single most common thing landing in our inbox was some version of the same question: could we do it in white? Nocturne always leaned dark and quiet, the midnight version of a warm wooden desktop, and plenty of people wanted the same idea with the lights on. Lumiere was our answer to that. Same warmth, same wood, but built to sit in a bright room instead of hiding in a dark one.

More furniture than hardware

The whole thing is built to feel more like furniture than hardware. It starts on a Fractal North, which already does the wood-and-mesh thing better than almost anything else out there, and we took that further; the front is all vertical oak slats, the glass is etched with roses so the panel catches light instead of just showing the parts behind it, and the shroud carries the same wood tone straight through the middle of the build. Everything else is white on white, the cooler, the card, the cabling, so the only real color in the whole machine is the oak. Sitting on a light desk in the sun, it reads less like a PC and more like something that was always supposed to be in the room.

Rose-etched glass side panel catching light over the white GPU and oak shroud
The glass is etched with roses — the panel catches light instead of just showing the parts behind it.

It reads less like a PC and more like something that was always supposed to be in the room.

Lumiere beauty shot — a white Fractal North build with oak slats and shroud on a bright desk
Lumiere.

So why retire something people clearly love? Honestly, it comes down to the hardware catching up to us faster than the design did. There still isn't a white GPU we'd feel good putting in a build with the Lumiere name on it, and the mounting inside needs to move forward a generation to keep up with where cards are going now. Our relationship with Arctic is also wrapping up, so the cooler is up in the air, too. And the wood on the shroud is a vinyl wrap, which was the right call at the time, but we've moved to real hardwood everywhere we can, and this particular piece just doesn't translate cleanly into the real thing.

White ASUS TUF graphics card and white cabling — white on white
White on white — the cooler, the card, the cabling.
The clean white top deck and the vertical oak front slats
Vertical oak slats and a clean top deck — the only real colour is the oak.

Lumiere might come back one day with a properly modernized look, though we'll be honest that it isn't at the top of the list. For the warm wooden desktop, Nocturne already covers that ground about as well as we could ask, and the light version always sat a little more like a variation on it than its own separate thing. It's a great build, and we love the way it looks. Sometimes the design holds up longer than the parts underneath it, and that's alright.