House lighting for church renovation

[techguru]

Hey guys. We are a new church plant and are renovating an old research building to turn it into our church until we can get our real building built. Anyway, the sanctuary is going to be 48ft x 48ft. i am needing to put some new lighting in there and was looking at canned lightning. I am staying a way from chandeliers and mercury vapors. Can anyone tell me the best lightning to go with and the configuration. I'm not doing much theater stuff YET, but it will come. Any help appreciated.

[Gracetech]

I assume you are wanting house lighting or are you wanting stage lighting too. First a few questions to get things going.

1. Do you want dimmable lights?
2. What type of fixture to you want?(incandescent, halogen, flourescent, CFL,....)
3. Do you want the fixture to add character or to just produce light?
4. What lumen per square foot are you shooting for?(or do you want to know what to shoot for)

Welcome to the forums btw!

crt

[techguru]

I am strictly wanting to know about house lightning at this point.
-Dimmable lights would be great, but not necessary.
-I was looking for incandescent lightning that would help add character to the room.
-on the lumen per square foot: I was wanting to know what to shoot for. I will have two projectors shooting through this lighting as well.

[Lucas]

I don't know very much about lighting, just know how to operate them (kinda) but when my church was built we got fluros, but now as we use more media and we turn them off for videos etc It's a very harsh drop in the lighting levels and it takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust to the dark...

Dimmable lights would be fantastic, if you can, get them

[stevperry]

Originally Posted by techguru

-on the lumen per square foot: I was wanting to know what to shoot for. I will have two projectors shooting through this lighting as well.

My suggestion having just done an install of this nature a couple months ago...First, spec the video screen paint, not actual video screens. No hanging hardware headaches, etc to deal with, just paint the area you want and then finish it with trim board for an awesome look. Second, if you are going to add theatrical lighting of some type in the future, hang the projectors as high to the ceiliing and as close to the future lighting hang position as possible. If you don't, then you will fight beam angles and coverage issues later. I dealt with that situation at our old facility for 2 years. Now the projectors hang 6 inches below the ceiling and about 3 feet from the lighting truss. They are well above my lighting fixtures and I don't have any coverage issues. Third, if theatrical fixtures are possibilities in the future, start thinking and planning for what you want now and keep that in mind during the renovation. It will simplify life later. As another thread mentions, you will need dedicated circuits for the future lighting, so if you have room in the budget to have them installed at the same time as this one is done, you will save a lot of money.

[Entbbe]

You might like to consider using LED's as the Technology is vastly improoved. (The Latest Genesis Tour is using 9 million of them)
Glad to put you in touch with our local Rep who will always advise on your particular project.