Wide-area solid-state illumination devices and systems employing a front sheet, a back sheet approximately coextensive with the front sheet, a wide-area light emitting panel positioned between the front and back sheets and one or more strips of a two-sided adhesive tape joining an inner surface of the front sheet with an inner surface of the back sheet along one or more perimeter edges so as to form a thin and hollow sheet-form structure having a generally uniform thickness and at least partially enclosing the wide-area light emitting panel. The wide-area light emitting panel includes one or more solid-state light sources and has a total area which is less than total areas of each of the front and back sheets. The two-sided adhesive tape is configured at a thickness that is approximately equal to or greater than a total thickness of the wide-area light emitting structure. The wide-area light emitting structure may include a planar light guide and one or more LEDs optically coupled to the light guide.