RE: Warehouse project – façade lighting design needed

An email lands in your inbox on Monday morning. A group that owns over 70 hotels worldwide has just bought a large, derelict warehouse in a big city.

Over the next year, their plan is to completely renovate it, creating the number one go-to destination in the area. As well as providing contemporary accommodation and state-of-the art facilities, it will feature a number of restaurants, bars, boutique shops and coffee bars.

They’ve seen your work elsewhere and you’ve been personally recommended. Because they like to be a little bit different, they’ve asked you to design a new lighting scheme for the warehouse façade. You’ve got free reign. Ultimate control. They’ve set you no limits, no boundaries and you’ve got a large budget to play with. The only objective? To ensure that even when the sunsets, the city-goers are attracted to this location.

What are you going to do?
In our façade lighting guide, we outline the various methods that can be used to light a building or structure’s façade. Here are just some of the ways you might want to use light to create that impact.

SPOT
By using building surface mounted luminaires, you could create a high contrast solution with a close offset accentuating the material, colour and finish of a building. Our PLAZA family of products could be installed at multiple levels or in between windows to accentuate the architectural aesthetic.

GRAZE
A linear luminaire (ground recessed or surface mounted) such as BLADE could provide an uninterrupted consisted wash of light up the building’s frontage. This would pick out different storeys or illuminate the whole façade as a low glare solution.

FLOOD
If it’s a really big warehouse, you might decide to use a floodlight – perhaps pole mounted away from the building – or affixed to the building itself. Our high-output FUSION provides a uniform lit effect with consistent colour.

INTEGRATE
You could achieve a striking pixel effect by using VISTA FLEX. Integrating your chosen luminaire into the buildings features would also allow the fittings to go unnoticed during daylight hours, but completely transforming the façade in darkness.

BACK LIT
Depending on the construction of this derelict warehouse – you could decide to backlight the façade. The architectural detail and material type is key to the consistency of the lit effect here. The BLADE family is the best option – providing a consistent backlighting graze.