The St. Ignatius Church, a city landmark with nearly a century’s history in San Francisco, California, had switched from its 40-year-old fluorescent architectural lighting to the new generation LED technology.
To address the church's lighting needs, Lindsley Architectural Lighting was hired to design a lighting master plan for the Church. The side chapel lighting was addressed first. As they discussed options for bringing out the beauty of the interior architecture, Lindsley suggested adding color to accent the details and coordinate the lighting color with the colors of the liturgical calendar. Additionally, a system with color-changing capability could enhance the musical and theatrical performances that occur frequently in the main sanctuary. Various technologies were investigated to achieve color-changing capabilities until ETC's Selador LED fixtures were found.
“We tried a Selador fixture and discovered it did a great job of meeting the design parameters. The decrease in complexity was also a benefit to the church to keep maintenance requirements minimal”, said Howard Case, the church's capital projects manager. And due to Selador's unique seven-color LED design, the fixtures were able to match the color temperature of existing lighting.
“The Selador units provide a wide range of spread lenses to meet the designer's needs. We ended up with one two-foot unit per column and rib with two high-power units at the spring points of the proscenium arch. ETC’s Unison® architectural dimming with LCD control panels provides centralized control over the lighting system and offers the ability to easily expand the system in the future.”
Installation was completed just in time for last Christmas, when the new architectural lighting enhancements would be revealed for the first time. Case describes the moment: “We created looks for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which incorporated red and green. The reaction of people when they walked into the church, where the dome over the sanctuary and all of the upper pilasters were lit for the first time (and not just lit, but with Christmas colors) was pretty amazing.”
