Attic classrooms and a name on an invoice.

VELUX is the brand of the VELUX Group, a Danish maker of roof windows, skylights and the blinds and shutters that go with them, with its headquarters in Hørsholm, north of Copenhagen. The group traces its origins to 1941, when the young civil engineer Villum Kann Rasmussen set up his own company, V. Kann Rasmussen & Co., in Copenhagen. English Wikipedia and the company’s own history agree on the year and the place.

The first large job came quickly. The company’s history says that within a year Kann Rasmussen received a commission to supply roof windows to Slagelse Vestre school on Zealand, where loft spaces were being turned into classrooms; English Wikipedia dates the commission to 1942. The VELUX Group quotes his aim as being “to make a skylight that is just as good as the best vertical window.” English Wikipedia says the window was at first called “Standard”, because it came in standard sizes that fitted ordinary Danish rafter spacing, but that he wrote the name VELUX on the first invoice.

The name is a coinage. The company says Kann Rasmussen registered VELUX as a trademark in 1942, taking “VE” from the word “ventilation” and “LUX” from the Latin word for light. English Wikipedia gives the same explanation and dates the Danish trademark registration to 3 October 1942.

Patents and a factory followed. The company says the VELUX roof window was patented in 1948 and its pivot hinge a year later, and English Wikipedia describes a pivot hinge and tilting sash, introduced in 1945, that allowed the window to be cleaned from inside. Production at first relied on subcontractors in Copenhagen, according to Wikipedia, until a factory for VELUX roof windows was set up in Østbirk, in Jutland, in 1946. Wikipedia says the company took full ownership of that plant in 1950 as A/S Østbirk Bygningsindustri, and the company dates its industrialisation to 1954.

Partners abroad, a family and its foundations.

Growth outside Denmark came partly through partners. The company says that in 1952 Villum Kann Rasmussen formed a partnership with Ernst Günter Albers, owner of the West German joinery E. Albers & V. Drathen, known as ALDRA. Together they set up VELUX GmbH Bauzubehör, and ALDRA made windows for the German market with hardware and know-how supplied from Denmark. English Wikipedia says the VELUX Group bought ALDRA’s operations in 2002.

Other markets followed. English Wikipedia says a subsidiary was set up in the United Kingdom in 1954, followed by France and Austria in 1964. It dates entry into the United States to 1975, with a sales company in Boston and later a production plant in Greenwood, South Carolina, built in 1978–1979, followed by Japan in 1981 and Hungary from 1986. The company’s history adds sales and production companies in Great Britain, France, the United States and Canada during the 1970s and 1980s, and a wider range that grew to include top-hung roof windows, roller shutters, electric windows and sun-screening products.

The ownership is unusual. English Wikipedia, citing the Villum Foundation’s own timeline, says a foundation was set up in 1971 as the main shareholder; first named the VELUX Foundation, it is now the Villum Foundation, and a separate VELUX Foundation was set up in 1981. The VELUX Group’s own website says the group is owned by VKR Holding A/S, a limited company owned by the Villum Foundation and members of the Kann Rasmussen family, and that the wider VKR Group has two main business areas, VELUX and DOVISTA.

The family stayed in charge across generations. The company says that in 1992 Villum Kann Rasmussen’s eldest son, Lars Kann-Rasmussen, became chairman of the board of V. Kann Rasmussen Industri, the parent company of the VELUX Group. English Wikipedia says that in 2001 VELUX A/S became the parent company of all VELUX activities while VKR Holding remained the parent of the wider group, and that in September 2024 ownership of the VKR Group came to be shared between the Villum Foundation and Lars Kann-Rasmussen’s sons, Jens and Mads Kann-Rasmussen.

The values document travels with the name. English Wikipedia, citing Kristoffer Jensen’s company history The Daylight Engineers, says Villum Kann Rasmussen wrote a statement called the Model Company Objective in 1965 and that it was amended in 1973; Wikipedia says it still guides the company’s business practices.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make windows, doors and roof windows: the frames, sashes, panels and glazing that close the openings of a house. Window and door brands sit at many different points in the trade, from family companies that began in a small joinery or a sawmill town to names that now belong to much larger building-materials groups, and a single brand can be sold through dealers, builders, lumber yards and home-improvement chains.

A window or door brand’s identity is usually carried less by one product than by a name, a label on the frame and the showroom signs and advertising that go with them, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, merged with a rival or moved its factories over the decades. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its windows and doors are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Capitals, a coined word and one logo since 1990.

The VELUX name is written in capitals, and the company uses that spelling throughout, from VELUX A/S to the VELUX Group. The word was coined for the window, and the company’s own explanation of “VE” for ventilation and “LUX” for light has become part of how the brand presents itself.

The company dates its present logo to a specific moment. Its history page says that “it took many attempts” to arrive at the VELUX logo, and that the logo used today was perfected in 1990, at the same time as the product ranges for Denmark, Germany and other European markets were standardised through a product generation called VES, for VELUX European Standard. The company describes these as some of the first steps towards a more unified brand across Europe. English Wikipedia adds that the VELUX trademark is used in all regions for all products and communication within the group.

Advertising has played its part. The company says that in 2003 it produced a series of animated television commercials called Toys in collaboration with an animation company, and English Wikipedia links to one of the Toys advertisements published by the company’s British arm in 2008. The company also dates a new vision statement to 2005: “To lead the development of better living environments with daylight and fresh air through the roof.”

Product generations carry their own names. The company’s history lists a window generation called V21 in 1998, the electrically operated INTEGRA window in 2002, the VELUX Sun Tunnel in 2005, the New Generation of roof windows and VELUX Modular Skylights in 2012, and a 3-in-1 roof window in 2020. English Wikipedia names an earlier model, the GGL, launched in 1968 and introduced in Germany in 1969, and says the group added Wasco Products, JET-Group and Vitral in 2018 to build a commercial skylight business.

For a design guide, VELUX shows how a coined word written on an early invoice can become a corporate name used in every market, held together since 1990 by a single logo and by family and foundation ownership. Compare it with Andersen and Marvin, two family-founded window makers. For this guide we use roof-tile red, zinc grey and pale sky with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep VELUX’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.