Outdoor facade lighting is an important work for beautifying the city environment at night. Due to the facade lighting, the night becomes bright and colorful, and every building in night can show their own charm. The successful lighting design can not only create a beautiful landscape for the city but also reflect it's distinctive culture and embody the humanistic feelings of this city.
To achieve a successful lighting effect for a commercial building, an exhibition center or a landscape, we need to to consider the shape of the building, the texture of the exterior walls, and lighting needs when designing the whole project. Different scenes and functions require different types of lights and lighting designs. Here we will introduce various cases in different scenarios in order to meet different illuminate requirements.
Classify by Application Scenarios
Shopping Mall
The lighting project of the shopping mall is a display of the overall image of the shopping center. Therefore, a suitable shopping mall lighting design can not only help the display of the shopping mall itself but also have the effect of attracting consumers to the shopping mall. Therefore, when carrying out the illuminating project of the shopping mall, the following points should be paid attention to：
①Show the style of the shopping mall: The shopping mall lighting project is an invisible brand of the shopping mall, and a splendid mall can show its strength of the mall and attracts more customers.
② Enhance the beautification of the city: The lighting of shopping malls should be integrated with the lighting of roads and residential areas to add color to the city's night scene.
Skyscraper
Skyscrapers generally appear in prosperous cities, and their night view is a beautiful landscape in the city. The lighting of skyscrapers needs to focus on highlighting the identity of the building, so that the high-rise buildings have a sense of hierarchy. The picture on the left is the illuminated landscape of Shanghai Center Skyscraper. Like a dragon, this skyscraper rose from the sea and hovered into the sky, soaring into the clouds, emitting a brilliant light in the night sky of Shanghai city. The brilliant lighting design makes the building draw a bright stroke in the dark night. Ring-shaped lighting installations appear on every fourteenth floor, which complement the dotted and linear lights next to it, enriching the city's skyline. The overall lighting effect gives a gorgeous and cool feeling, symbolizing the vigorous development of the city.
◽ Tower
Generally, the towers illuminate need to emphasize their landscape function, and the lighting requirements are higher than in ordinary public buildings. Also, as an ornamental building, the lighting design of the tower doesn't need to consider the effects of interior lighting, and the illumination can be determined according to actual needs and the surrounding environment.
When designing a tower lighting scheme, the below points should be considered:
1. Conduct a preliminary investigation of the building structure, including a full understanding of the volume, surface materials, colors, etc.
2. Carry out structural analysis on the building structure, select the installation location, conceal the lamps, and finally determine the direction of the effect plan.
3. In the selection of lamps, the requirements for light control must be clear, and strive to achieve the best effect.
◽ Stadium Facade Illumination
A successful stadium or gym illumination project also needs to comply with the following points:
① Pay attention to the aerial view and pay attention to using the light to outline the whole construction.
② To be combined with the sports elements in the center of the stadium
③ The night bright design of the gymnasium should avoid direct light. Whether applying internal light transmission or LED floodlight outdoor for lighting, it is necessary to avoid the glare effect.
◽ Museum Night Lighting
Museum facade light designing has a high level requirement, not only to achieve "brightness", but also to create a comfortable visual experience for people.
The exterior wall lighting of the museum builds the style tone of the museum, so the selection of lamps and lanterns should consider the coordination between the appearance and the building. We can use a combination of points, lines, and surfaces to illuminate the whole and highlight local features.
In terms of light regulation, it is necessary to fully consider the distribution of light hue, saturation, intensity and brightness in the display space to create a visually comfortable light environment.
The left picture is Shenzhen Art Museum, this lighting design mainly adopts the form of internal light transmission, overcomes multiple challenges and is well integrated inside the building to create a clean and sharp urban "rock" that is clear and translucent.
◽ Bridge Light Design
Unlike typical architectural landscape lighting, the design of bridge landscape lighting must meet both functional lighting and artistic aesthetic requirements. For functional lighting, technical indicators such as horizontal, vertical, uniformity, anti-glare, and bridge safety should be considered in the lighting design. In addition, landscape lighting cannot be ignored.
The design of landscape lighting for new modern bridges should take into account the integration of more modern elements and the overall integration with existing urban layouts. It shows the characteristics, innovation, high tech, etc. of the times. The design scheme takes into consideration energy saving, environmental protection, safety and cost.
In light effect design, it is necessary to fully understand the characteristics, functions, styles, social and historical background conditions, finishing materials, environment, and creativity of bridges, so the designer can decide on an appropriate lighting method.
◽ Ferris wheel Lighting Beautification
The key to the Ferris Wheel illumination plan is the arrangement of the lights, and the lights of the Ferris wheel flicker at night, highlighting the charm of the Ferris wheel. The design concept is to bring people a dreamy, dazzling, and happy feeling. Make the Ferris wheel a dazzling pearl and attract more tourists. The left picture shows a Ferris Wheel decorated by lots of pixel dot lights. The dot light formed a line to outline the shape of the Ferris Wheel and make it shining at night.
According to the construction structure of the Ferris Wheel, the lights are arranged reasonably, and the brightness of the lights is reduced under the premise of satisfying the lighting. High-quality low-power LED dot lights are used to from a DMX lighting system, which cannot only meet the beautification needs but also save energy.
◽ Park and Square Illuminating
Parks and squares important places for residents to relax, entertain and exercise. The nightlight projects in parks and squares are important for the construction of neighbors and the entire city.
Tree lighting requires careful selection of the appropriate lighting method and location of the luminaire. Avoid prolonged lighting have an impact on the growth of plants.
The flower bed should adopt a top-down illuminating design to highlight the flowers themselves.
Waterscape lighting should consider the protective measures when it freezing in winter.
The illumination of fountain should think over the brightness of the ambient and the shape of the water spray.
◽ City Street
City street lighting can not only reflect the cultural heritage of a city, but also create a unique business card for the city. How to achieve a good result for the city street in the night?
① Not only the illuminating devices should be safe, but also to ensure the convenience of transportation and people's travel.
② Use available resources, reduce waste, improve lighting efficiency, and reduce financial costs during installation.
③ In design, it is necessary to reflect aesthetics. For example, abstract lines can be used to increase the beauty. The design of the height of the street lamp fully considers the factors of the surrounding environment, and designs the appropriate height.
◽ Hotel Facade Lighting
The hotel is a place for guests to rest, the light should not be too fancy. The overall lighting can not be too bright, and a warm and comfortable atmosphere needs to be created.
Most hotels use a color temperature of about 3000K for overall brightness, showing a beautiful warm white on the facade.
In general, it follows the principle of simplicity and atmosphere, which not only outlines the external outline of the hotel, but also makes it more beautiful in appearance, which can reflect the characteristics of the entire building.
◽ Worship Place Illumination
The worship place like church mainly embodies the solemn and warm feeling. When implementing the lighting project, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the architectural style, historical background, and the lighting tone of the surrounding night scene, and draw on the lighting effects of other similar architectural styles to formulate a church night scene that can reflect the implicit, solemn and mysterious color of the main church building.
The right image shows the illumination effect of the church located in Iceland. This church lighting project adopts a combination of LED floodlights and external LED spotlights to give the building a bright and dark area to create a silhouette effect.
The ingenious use of underground lights around the main building does not affect the passage, but also casts light and shadow on the building facade to increase the highlights.
Category by Different Function
◾ Architectural lighting
The architecture constitutes the basic appearance of the city, and the lighting of the building directly determines the night view of the city. Different styles of buildings have different lighting points, but the basic lighting technology is similar.
① The lighting design at the door and entrance of the building generally adopts three methods: traditional waterproof neon lights, LED screen, and LED flood lights.
② The facade lighting of buildings is usually illuminated by architectural LED floodlights and DMX LED spotlighs. Now the emerging LED wall washer is also used in the local lighting of buildings, and the wall illuminating on the ground floor is sometimes also illuminated by underground lights.
③ The outline lighting of buildings is now more commonly used LED linear lights.
Furthermore, it is necessary to avoid glare and create a comfortable light environment.
◾ Landscape
Landscape lighting design can be mainly divided into three types: ambient, thematic, and functional.
① Environmental design: In order to improve the quality of the environment: with beauty and comfort as the core. It mainly focuses on the shape of LED lamps, light distribution design, light color planning, lighting levels, glare control, and harmony with the environment.
② Theme-based design: Design the scheme with symbolic and narrative theme concepts as the core. The entire lighting project not only enhances the beauty of the landscape form, but also has a deep connotation, which establishes a connection with people's lives, social changes, natural phenomena, and historical traditions.
③ Functional design: to meet the functional requirements of lighting as the core. The design level with lighting quality as the appeal meets the needs of people's spiritual aesthetic level.
◾ Commercial facade lighting
Commercial facade lighting is also called commercial complex outdoor lighting, commercial plaza illuminating projects, etc. The lighting plan of the exterior wall of commercial buildings is very important to enhance the attraction of shopping malls and commercial centers, and to optimize the shopping environment at night, which has attracted more and more people's attention. It can even be said that it has become the standard configuration of shopping malls and shopping centers. In the above picture, the DMX bar lightswith warm white lightare installed on the surface of the commercial building to outline the shape of the building and illuminate the entrance of the shopping mall. Commercial constructions are often prosperous districts. In order to make a building or a commercial plaza a landmark building, it is necessary to cut into the characteristics of the commercial environment when using lighting design, make full use of the lighting to show the charm and brand image of the shopping mall, and achieve the unity of form and spirit.
◾ Event lighting
Event lighting can normally be divided into decorative and functional lighting. Decorative illumination is mainly used in playgrounds, tourist attractions, river landscape, park, cultural institutions, etc. Functional lighting is usually used for highway bridge, train station, airports, shipping streets, squares,workshop, urban lighting, stage illumination, etc.
◾ Media lighting
Media facades are layers of individually controllable lights attached or even embedded into the exterior surface of a building, serving as a dynamic basis for displaying text, graphics, and video animations.
Media facade lighting is a layer of individually controllable lights attached or even embedded into the exterior surface of a building, serving as a dynamic basis for displaying text, graphics, and video animations. As a professional manufacturer of outdoor lighting system solutions, Suntech advocates replacing traditional digital screens with high-quality outdoor LED pixel mesh screens in media lighting engineering, which not only realizes interactive or intelligent control of facade lighting but also reduces energy consumption. consumes and prolongs the life of the screen.
Industrial illumination generally belongs to functional lighting, mainly including lighting in factories, manufacturing workshops, basketball courts, welding workshops, industrial kitchens, and other areas.
When making a lighting solution for an industrial area, what do we need to pay attention to?
① In the field of industrial lighting, the requirements for the life of lamps are also very high. We should give priority to lamps with small light decay and long life.
② If it is in a high temperature place, we should choose exterior linear wall washer or floodlights with good heat dissipation performance and high temperature resistance.
③ If it is in a dusty or humid place, choose a luminaire with the corresponding protection level.
④ Industrial lighting requires higher lighting levels. If there are no special requirements for the spectrum, neutral white light with high color rendering should be used; the same requirements should be applied to local lighting, and it is also required to better avoid glare.
This article introduced kinds of facade lighting and the notification for each illumination category, hope the above information can provide you with reference.
Below are some relative blogs that may help you to acknowledge more knowledge about facade lighting:
Wall Wash Lighting
Installation and Application
Best 10 Modern Classic Facade Lighting Designs - Explore the World of LED facade
25 Recommended lighting design software for facade
Exterior Facade Lighting Design
How to Light Up Your Facade
Facade Lighting In Commercial Lighting
Top 10 Architectural Facade Lighting Companies in the World
Outdoor Lighting LED Products you maybe interested in:
