Its festival season so it got me thinking about lights at festivals, the logistics and what lights are used. So I started looking into it, and then got really distracted! I didn’t realise how vast Lighting Festivals really are! They are held in cities all over the world. Genuinely, I am mesmerised by the extent that some buildings are transformed to by some lighting designs. They are truly breath taking!

Lighting festivals seems to be a big thing amongst European countries and cities, for example in Finland, Berlin, Sweden, Portugal, UK, France, Netherlands, and Belgium. Landmarks that normally bring people to the cities to come and visit them are lit up in such a way which causes much more attraction! It seems that in these cities the festival tends to be in mid-autumn. There is no reason stated, but it must have something to do with the days getting shorter and darker and it’s a way to literally, light up the days! How close these festivals are to Christmas is also significant as it can be argued that many of the light festival originated because of Christmas anyway – there’s something about light at Christmas, its magical!

These lighting festivals are a great way for aspiring lighting designers to come up and show off their talent, or it’s a way for local lighting companies to promote their products and motivate people to think and look more into lighting and what can be done with it. Tourists are what makes lighting festivals even more appealing to these cities; many people are attracted to view these beautiful, unique, short lived spectacles. The festivals and tourism go hand in hand, both feed each other; tourists are attracted to the light and this in turn has a positive effect on the city as media coverage grows and more people want to attend the festivals.

LED lights are beginning to feature more heavily in these lighting festivals; a building in The Netherlands is transformed by LED’s during the GLOW light festival. 30,000 LED lights cover the dome of an Italian Renaissance building, making it look more striking than its design already was. The intricate lighting design mirrors, compliments and adds to the building.

Elsewhere in Europe, Belgium has an even more impressive LED light display which uses 55,000 energy saving LED’s to light up a cathedral at the Ghent Light Festival. Both of these two works of art are created by an Italian family of the name Luminarie De Cagna.

I love how a building, already beautiful, can be transformed into something even more breath taking with the addition of some lights. It is suspected that we are to expect a lot more where light festivals come from! The European tradition is fast spreading with more cities joining the band waggon! Bettina Pelz curator of LichtRouten (Amsterdam) predicts “the variety will change… I think we will have more festivals that go further for lighting design, for art and maybe even for technology. Others will be just for city marketing reasons”. We are not complaining about the potential increase in these festivals though! We love light and love that LED’s are being used to draw attention to themselves, light itself and these beautiful architecture buildings.

LED strips are the closest thing that is on the market available for anybody to use that will create a similar effect to what you see on these buildings. LED strips admittedly won’t create a pattern or be anywhere near as aesthetically pleasing as the ones on these buildings but LED strips are the closest product available where you will be able to be freer with designs you create and lighting variations. LED strips are also available in different colours which add to the long list of reasons as to why they are becoming increasingly popular. For more information on LED strips or if you want to talk to someone about the effects that can be created with the use of LED strips, read our blog or contact us on 01420 520521.