Lighting Design
Event and Uplighting
A room that looks the way it should at every point in the night
What is included
What you get
Uplighting, dance floor lighting, pin spots, and monogram projection. We design the look from photos of your actual venue, because what works in a white ballroom does nothing in a wood barn.
- Uplighting placed around the room in a color you choose
- Dance floor lighting that moves with the music without turning the room into a nightclub
- Pin spots on the cake, the head table, or centerpieces where it helps the photos
- Wireless battery fixtures for venues that will not allow cable runs
- Monogram or text projection
- One color look for dinner and a different one for the dance
- A design review using photos of your specific venue before the date
- Everything set before guests arrive and struck after they leave
How we work
Our approach
We design from photos of your actual room
Uplighting is entirely dependent on what it is hitting. Painted drywall throws color back and makes a room glow. Bare wood absorbs it and needs twice the fixtures at half the spacing. Stone and brick take color beautifully but unevenly. Send us photos of the room and we will tell you what the look you want is actually going to take.
The room should change through the night
Dinner and the dance are not the same event and should not look the same. We build a warmer, lower look for the meal and toasts, then shift the room when the floor opens. It is a lighting cue rather than a new setup, and it does more for how a reception feels than almost anything else we do.
Light the architecture, not just the wall
A lot of venues here have something worth looking at: original brick in Deadwood, timber in a barn, stonework in a lodge. We would rather light that than throw color at whatever flat surface happens to be closest. The room already has character in most cases and the job is to show it.
What we bring
On the truck
We size the system to your room and your guest count rather than rolling the same rig into every job.
- Wireless battery uplights for venues that will not run cable
- Wired LED uplights for longer events and larger rooms
- Moving or effect fixtures for the dance floor, run from the booth
- Pin spot fixtures for cake, head table, and centerpiece detail
- Gobo projector for monogram or text
- DMX control with preset looks for each part of the night
- Cable matting and floor management where cable has to cross a walkway
Questions
What people ask us
How many uplights does our venue need?
It depends on the wall surface and the room size far more than a per foot rule. A painted ballroom might read well with twelve. The same square footage in a bare wood barn can take twenty and still look subtle. Send photos of the room and we will give you a real number instead of a guess.
Can you match a specific color?
Close, yes. LED fixtures mix a very wide range and we can get to a specific swatch in most cases. What we cannot fully control is how the wall changes it, since a color reads differently on cream drywall than it does on stone. If the color is critical, we will test it against photos of your room first.
Our venue does not allow cables across the floor. Is that a problem?
No, it is common, especially in historic buildings and park lodges. Wireless battery fixtures run a full reception on a charge and need no cable at all. We plan for that from the start at venues we know have the restriction.
Do we need lighting if the venue is already pretty?
Sometimes not, and we will say so. A venue with good architectural lighting and warm fixtures often needs accents rather than a full design. Where lighting earns its cost is in flat, evenly lit rooms and in spaces that go dark once the sun goes down.
Service area
Event Lighting across the Black Hills
We run event lighting throughout western South Dakota and into Wyoming. Every town on this list has its own page with what the work actually looks like there.
Related
Often booked together
Wedding DJ
Prelude through last dance, with the timeline handled
Talk to us about thisCorporate Events
The program runs on time and everyone hears it
Talk to us about thisSchool Dances
Clean edits, controlled volume, and a full floor
Talk to us about thisLive Sound
Front of house, monitors, and an engineer who stays at the board
Talk to us about thisStart a conversation
Talk to us about event lighting
Send us the date and the venue and we will come back to you with what production actually makes sense for it. No pressure, no packages pushed at you.