Thomas Emde was born 1959 in hessian Korbach. After leaving school he completed an apprenticeship to become a color retoucher at the publishing house of the Frankfurter Rundschau. In 1993, he began his studies of Fine Arts at the Art University Kassel, continued them in 1985 at the Berlin University of Arts, where he completed his studies in 1985, being part of the master class program of Kuno Gonschior.
In 1990, he attained the yearly announced scholarship of the Jürgen-Ponto-Stiftung and the city of Frankfurt/Main, where Thomas Emde lives and works ever since.
After a successful international career as an artist he began working intensely with light as a medium and material for his projects. In 1999 he founded the company emdelight, realizing numerous large-scale architectural lighting projects. His extraordinary success in the Middle East led to a second office in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
Thomas Emde and his team decided in 2013 to henceforth devote themselves to the development and marketing of interior lighting. It is their goal to create people-friendly "good light" and act against the increasing light pollution. In autumn of that same year, Thomas Emde founded the company emdedesign GmbH and the luminary brand OMLED for the above stated purpose.
With the founding of EMDE development of light GmbH in 2015, Thomas Emde consistently continues his involvement with OLED technology to develop better light. Since 2016 he has been selling the world's first OLED design luminaire family OMLED One under his own brand OMLED.
In 2018, Thomas Emde's commitment leads to the foundation of OLED Licht Forum e. V., an OLED expert network of industrial companies and research institutes for the promotion of OLED lighting technology, whose chairman is Thomas Emde.