While a significant amount of time is spent on the design of a worship facility’s interior spaces, there’s an important technical aspect that greatly impacts the end result of that architectural design: lighting.
"Wall grazers work better for walls where you desire to accentuate [the] uneven or rough characteristics of a wall. A stone wall, for example, takes on a dramatic look when lit with grazer fixtures."
—BRIDGET WILLIAMS Owner, Williams Design & Consultants LLC, Southern California.
“Human beings primarily communicate visually,” says Bridget Williams, owner of Williams Design & Consultants LLC based in southern California. “What you see affects how you feel about a space. Our job as a lighting designer is more than just making the architecture look good. It is about the people and helping to communicate the look or feeling for each event or service. Lighting will help direct attention and focus when needed and create that spiritual space.”
A good lighting design will accent the features and areas to which people’s attention should be drawn; a poor design will show off imperfections or create a distraction from what the space is all about. And what constitutes a good architectural lighting design will depend on the style of both the space as well as the services and events that take place there.
Wall Washes
“For our contemporary church, we use color-changing LED pendant lighting for our house lighting,” reports Chris Kozen, worship production coordinator for Valley Creek Church in Flower Mound, Texas. “This provides both illumination for the congregation but also forms our wall-wash through those fixtures being placed closer to the edges of the room.”Kozen considered using linear LED lights as wall grazers (fixtures placed within two feet of the wall) to add color to the walls of the sanctuary, but found that fixtures placed that close to the wall would show off imperfections in the drywall finish. A wall wash from the house lighting fixtures gave them the ability to alter the mood of the room by changing the color on the walls without highlighting any wall unevenness. “Washing the walls with color such as is done at Valley Creek with the Chroma-Q Inspire fixtures enables you to extend the theatricality you have on stage throughout the rest of the facility,” states David Stephens, consultant with Idibri in the Dallas area. “It lets you change the feel of the room by changing the color of the walls.”. Stephens continues, “For the fourth of July, the First Baptist Church of Dallas had a flag waving on the video screen, and they also mapped the video of the flag onto the LED wall fixtures to extend the feeling of the waving flag around the entire room.” The type of fixtures specified in a space is largely determined by the wall material and what might be placed on those walls.
“Wall grazers work better for walls where you desire to accentuate [the] uneven or rough characteristics of a wall,” Williams notes. “A stone wall, for example, takes on a dramatic look when lit with grazer fixtures.”“We find that wall washes work fine for flat walls but in the case of angled walls or angled acoustic panels, it becomes more challenging,” Williams adds. In addition to the shape of the wall, another consideration is the color the wall is painted. “A colored wall washed with certain colors of light can combine to look pretty terrible,” Stephens says. “If color washes are planned, neutral colored walls work best.”First Baptist Church of Orlando, Fla., also transitioned to LED color-changing Inspire house lighting fixtures, as well as linear LED lighting as wall grazers. And through its new lighting system, reports achieving some interesting effects.
Color Temperature, CRI and Consistency
Part of what helps set a mood in a space is the color temperature of the white light being used. “If you use warmer color temperature lighting (closer to incandescent lighting) when people are entering a space, there's more of a sense of community and comfort,” states Stephens, “whereas cooler color temperatures that are closer to daylight tend to be energizing.”
When you are using linear LED lighting for wall grazers, it’s important to recognize that the exact colors of the LEDs can vary from fixture to fixture. In a process called binning, manufacturers test the LEDs to ensure that their color falls into an acceptable range. Generally speaking, the higher the cost of the fixture, the less tolerant the binning process is for selecting the LEDs, and the better the fixtures will match each other.###1###Another area of variance for LED fixtures is color temperature. “We've done tests where different fixtures are supposed to be the same color temperature, but they look different on wood,” Stephens says. “Don't trust what's stamped on the side of the fixtures. Turn it on and look at it under the conditions it will be used. The rated color temperature is only one part of how the fixture actually looks—color rendering index (CRI) makes a difference in the perceived color temperature as well.”
Traditional and Historical Spaces
Beyond architectural lighting for the house and walls, more traditional worship environments oftentimes include features that, when highlighted through appropriate lighting, can greatly impact the feel of the space and the mood it evokes.
{Designers must consider:}
- What do I want to highlight?
- Does it have columns, or a cove that could be washed?
- Are there stone surface walls that would look nice lit?
- Do you want to see the fixture or should it be hidden?
“You should work with the architects on considering areas to highlight, as well as with the other trades,” Stephens suggests. “You might find that the HVAC contractor is planning on running a duct right where you want to locate a wall-wash fixture.”“When it comes to a more historical building,” says Williams, “you need to highlight aspects of the architecture and artwork present in the room that people want to look at. Many traditional houses of worship have statues placed in the space, or artwork hanging on the walls. You need to find locations where you can subtly place fixtures to illuminate these objects. And when it comes to a remodel, you usually have to figure out how to do it with the existing wiring, as opening up the walls to rewire [sometimes] isn’t feasible. The nice thing about the new LED fixtures is that you can use more fixtures per circuit [because] they use less power. However, you still have to figure out how to run a control cable.” When choosing fixtures for traditional worship spaces, Williams looks for a high CRI rating. “Traditional spaces often have lots of paintings, so the color rendering of a fixture is critical for the artwork to look as it should. And with regard to the color temperature, most of the clients with these buildings don't want too cool a look—they want the warm incandescent white light.”
Williams also tries to create sections of lighting within the space. This enables specific areas of the church to be lit via lighting zones, and helps with energy savings as well as focusing the attention to the area you desire.“The biggest distraction you can make in these spaces is by allowing the fixtures themselves to be visible and attract attention,” she continues. “I work with the architects to create spaces where the fixtures being used to highlight special features can be hidden from view. Whenever possible, I want to hide the fixtures and wiring.”
Control Made Simple
In addition, Williams is concerned about the method of lighting control for traditional spaces. “These churches don’t have technical staff people to manage the system,” she comments. “I select control systems such as ETC’s Unison Paradigm architectural dimming and control system that let me program presets for their services and different event types. They need to be able to walk into the room and press one button for their worship service, another for a wedding, and another for a funeral. It needs to be kept simple—they don’t need to have lighting technology that distracts the church staff from the purpose of the event.”
