We study several classes of exterior and interior axially symmetric spacetimes, such as wormholes, accelerating black holes, and binary black hole systems, from the point of view of light surfaces related to the generators of Killing horizons. We show that light surfaces constitute a useful framework for the study of the more diverse axially symmetric geometries. In particular, we point out the existence of common properties of the light surfaces in different spacetimes. We introduce a deformation of the Kerr-Newman metric and apply the light surfaces framework to analyze several generalizations in a compact form. As particular examples, we analyze static and spinning wormhole solutions, black holes immersed in external (perfect fluid) dark matter, spacetimes with (Taub) NUT charge, acceleration, magnetic charge, and cosmological constant, binary Reissner-Nordstrom black holes, a solution of a (low-energy effective) heterotic string theory, and the (1+ 2) dimensional BTZ geometry.