Introduction

Having the right tools to assist you while designing your lighting system is the first step
in creating the perfect visual environment. This brochure is intended to help you in the
beginning stages of your lighting design. It contains several lighting design packages with
equipment lists and a glossary of terms.

Choosing the right lighting environment will depend on the different applications
your facility will be using and your worship style. Lighting control can be an instrumental
part of worship as well as accentuating dramas and special events. Once your needs are
determined, you can start designing the right lighting system for you.

To begin, we will explain the basics behind a lighting system. There are three main
components within a system.

Lighting Fixtures
Lighting fixture types and sizes will be determined by their intended use and
placement. From there, you will calculate how many channels of control your system
requires and what is the total wattage for those channels. In other words, how many lights
are needed and what is the total wattage?

Dimmer System
The next step would be to choose your dimmer system. The dimmers do all of the
hard work in your system. The dimmers are given instructions from the console via control
signals which are then relayed to the lighting fixtures using voltage and current. You will
select your dimmers based on the numbers you calculated from the fixture count and
wattages. How many lights or channels are needed and what is the wattage for those
channels? If you have twenty-four lights you would like to dim individually, you would
want one or more dimmers which provide twenty-four dimmable channels. You can
always choose a larger amount of channels for future growth of your facility.

Control System
The last step in deciding on a lighting system is selecting a control console. A
control console is a product which communicates with a dimmer via control signals giving
commands to control the light’s intensity. To decide which console is right for your
application, you will need to look at the number of needed channels or lights. The same
concept used when selecting a dimmer applies here. If you have twenty-four lights you
would like to control individually, you would want a twenty-four channel control console.
Again, you can always choose a controller with more channels for future growth of your
facility.