Vintage Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, is the latest house of worship to discover the transformative powers of Elation Professional’s Colour Pendant LED downlight luminaire. Tasked this past summer with bringing the church’s lighting up to date, full service event production, lighting design and installation firm Company De Roth replaced the venue’s outdated house lights with versatile colour-changing Colour Pendants.
“Prior to our entry the church only had fluorescent house lights and a few stage RGB Par Cans that didn’t really provide much punch,” explained Company De Roth’s, Jonathan Roth, who completed the lighting design along with Ken Roth. “The goal with the new lighting was to give the church more versatility and the capacity to create a mood via coloured house lighting for worship services.”
The Colour Pendants, which are mounted to structural purlins running across the angled ceiling of the main worship auditorium, serve several purposes. Jonathan explained: “Most importantly, they give the venue the ability to create any mood. Churches often work off emotions during worship and the sermon, and white light can only go so far. The Colour Pendants allow Vintage to create any mood/atmosphere or environment they desire.”
The Colour Pendants house 36 long-life 3W RGBW LEDs for fully blended colour transformations or projections of variable shades of white light. The fixture’s LED advantages of reduced maintenance and savings on electricity were also important factors in their choice. “It goes without saying, but the fact that these are LED fixtures means they are going to last a long time,” Jonathan stated. “This in turn leads to lower maintenance cost as there is no need to replace gels or lamps. And because they’re LED’s, they don’t take much power. When lighting an area as big as our main sanctuary/auditorium, the electric bill is smaller compared to using traditional incandescent fixtures. If you can lower the utility bill and give your client more versatility, that makes everyone look good.”
With black walls, a black ceiling and a black curtain, Vintage Church’s worship space was extremely dark and having dark spots in the room was Company De Roth’s biggest concern, according to Jonathan. “Probably the most important feature for us of the Colour Pendants was the beam spread,” he said of the fixture’s 41° beam angle. “We had ZERO dark spots with this fixture. When you bring up a colour the room glows that colour, which is really saying a lot for as dark as that space is.”
Installed in August, the Colour Pendants have the versatility to be used as primary white lights for the main worship space or as full-colour immersive wash lights when required. This allows them to be used for services on Sunday mornings, which is their primary purpose at Vintage, or for any type of church activity from special seasonal events and youth conferences to Fourth of July concerts and Christmas specials.
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