How Basic Uplighting Can Transform Your Event

Let’s start with the basics: What is uplighting? 

For some of you, this may be obvious, and the title itself may be pretty straightforward, but to those who have never used the technique, I’ll give you a textbook definition. Uplighting is when you use lighting from below to illuminate upwards on a surface, or something that might be a point of interest that you want people to see. Most often the fixtures are placed on the ground, but not always. 

You may be asking, well why do I need it? How is it going to actually change my event space? Is it worth spending money on? Don’t worry, I’m here to tell you why and how! 

Why?

Uplighting has a magical way of really transforming a space, even if it’s an already beautiful location. It takes what could be an otherwise boring wall, and turns it into an elegant visual point. It can accent trees along a walkway, or even something like a car for a car show. Often lighting building support pillars or columns along a wall, can really take a space from your usual everyday event space, and make it something special.

For weddings, uplighting gives you another way to elevate your venue and add some life to the space. You can set the lights to the same color scheme as your wedding to really tie everything together, or you can set it to a warmer color to make the space feel more inviting and intimate for your guests. Either way, the uplights can really make a space feel like your own.

The biggest takeaway, which is a hard one to put into writing, is the feel or vibe of the space. What really makes this specific effect special, is that it takes what is a general event space, that anyone can come and rent, and it makes it so much more *yours*. No matter the space, or how many others have run events in there, they’ve not done one that matches your color scheme, and your overall vision. Uplighting takes walls that fit for every event, and makes them fit for just your event. Effectively taking the building itself, and making it custom to you. Nothing else can do that, save for literally painting or covering all the walls in a space.

How?

There are many lighting fixtures you can use to achieve this effect. Back in the day we used to use conventional par cans with gel (a colored piece of plastic), but nowadays we typically just use LEDs. In our rental fleet, we typically use Chauvet’s SlimPar Pro H or ETC’s Colorsource Par when inside, and use an IP-rated fixture like Elation’s Sixpar 200IP or 300IP outdoors. Specific fixtures aside, the general rule is, if it looks good and is safe, it works.

Depending on the beam angle of the fixture, you want to place it anywhere from 2 to 12 inches away from the surface you are trying to illuminate. Room placement is the next biggest thing, with that depending on the room layout and features, the lighting fixtures coverage, and power opportunities. Uplighting is effectively a balance between adding light, and playing with shadows, so it really is an artistic thing. You’ll get better with practice(or you can hire us, we had lots!)

Is it worth it?

We think so! Event spaces see MANY clients yearly, and the only way to make a space really stand out, and match you specifically, is to modify the walls and the way the space looks. We all know permanently modifying a space isn't normally an option, so the next most effective thing is uplighting. Lighting is also usually the most cost-effective way to do so too.