Façade Lighting

A façade is a building’s primary exterior face. It generally includes the main entry to the building and has the most elaborate architectural features. As the most public face of a building or structure, a façade is particularly important. For examples, studies have shown that thoughtful design improvements often lead to greater sales for a business by attracting more customers.

As well, people find the nightscapes around them created by illuminated building façades. These façades facilitate orientation, convey messages, communicate emotions and create attention. Contemporary lighting solutions for building façades need to create added value for local authorities or have architectural or economic merit by making a location more beautiful and safer, showing a building off in the right light or getting a positive corporate image across. Achieving this demands great aesthetic design sensibility. Nowadays, however, lighting solutions also need to be sustainable, save resources and prevent unnecessary light pollution.

The number of buildings that have illuminated façades is also increasing sharply. Because of architectural, societal and technological changes, lighting design faces new challenges. Saving energy is an omnipresent challenge, façade lighting must therefore get to grips with ecological compatibility issues. All lighting entails increased expenditure on energy. Light that is not properly directed onto a façade is perceived as distracting and an unnecessary waste of light.

Role of Façade Lighting

A.Façade lighting as a marketing factor

Society is in a state of change and many people are turning night into day. They want to carry on having fun late into the evening: they seek out entertainment and information and welcome surprises. Even so, safety and orientation must be ensured despite the darkness. Façade lighting shapes the image of a townscape, attracts attention and lures in large numbers of tourists. This boosts revenues and enhances prestige. It also gives investors an economic incentive to gentrify real estate and upgrade property usage, thus making it economically more attractive. Façade lighting creates added cultural value

Beautiful, eﬀective lighting provides clear visibility for your storefront. Lighting should be visually appealing and appropriately illuminate storefront signage, window displays, and recessed areas of the building façade. Strategic lighting can also increase the perception of safety for passing customers and supplement the existing street lighting in the area. In general, façade lighting should call attention to the features of the building and the storefront it illuminates, not to the fixture.

The more safe and welcoming a city feels, the more citizens and visitors will enjoy it. Lighting
creates exciting spaces that people want to spend time in, eating, drinking and taking in the sights. Using beautiful, energy-efficient lighting to creative vibrant social spaces can also have a dramatic eﬀect on a city’s reputation.It enhances tourism and nightlife, generating valuable income for hotels, restaurants, bars and shops.
So the city becomes a more attractive destination for people and businesses. An investment
in lighting that practically pays for itself.

Light supports tourism development

Nowadays in the context of increasing tourism competition between cities, many of them use
light to build or strengthen their nocturnal identity and make it a city marketing tool.
Through its capacity to develop the attractiveness of city nightscapes and have a global inﬂuence on the city’s identity, lighting represents a real opportunity in terms of tourism strategy.
The beauty and dynamism of the city, revealed by lighting, contribute to a positive sense
of ownership amongst citizens.
This pride radiates outwards: citizens become the best representatives of their city and
promote its positive image. As a result of this local process, tourist’s activity develops. In return,
the interest of tourists in their city increases the pride of citizens. In the short term, shops, restaurants, hotels and tourism service providers are the first to benefit economically from the lighting project. In the medium and longer term, the positive impact finds expression in the arrival of new citizens and businesses.

B.Responsibility for nature, resources and the environment

Added cultural value must be weighed against the responsibility we bear in our day-to-day dealings with nature, resources and the environment. Improperly used night-time lighting can have a negative impact on the environment. Such lighting disrupts the biological processes of creatures that are sensitive to light.
Stray light that shines into the sky consumes unnecessary energy and adds to light pollution. Zumtobel takes on board these challenges and assists designers and architects in their attempts to find a balance between using light in a way that saves resources and creating added cultural value.

Towns and municipalities use many activities to promote tourism, make a business location attractive or establish a residential district. Illuminating façades at night is a good way of improving the attractiveness of a public space. More and more people are spending their evening hours in towns and squares. They are looking for excitement, and communication plays a pivotal role.
Illuminated architecture shapes a townscape and gives it personality. A pretty scene is not only a popular choice for postcards, it also has concrete, positive effects on the travel behaviour of tourists and influences commercial enterprises’ relocation decisions: an integral
approach to using lighting technology for centre-stage settings and accent lighting and a concept which, besides historic buildings, also includes shopping centres, firms and public areas produces a harmonious townscape.

Apart from the street lighting which is needed to make traffic routes safe in towns and cities, it is a lighting concept’s job to lend character to urban areas and districts when it is dark and artificial lighting is in use. Regardless of a location’s size, professional lighting architecture makes the most of every district and every town.

Professional façade lighting can potentially become a landmark and a point of interest for reporters and photographers. This encourages tourism – and brings benefits to the economy and communities.
More efficient utilization of amenities and a growing stream of visitors transform the peripheral areas of a town into an attractive business location. Newly arrived firms upgrade buildings and attract employees.

Exceptional townscapes attract tourists.
Commercial enterprises are inﬂuenced by townscapes when deciding where to locate their business.
Visually appealing towns are more attractive places to live.

There are two aspects to façade lighting: it enhances the cultural value and attractiveness of a town – but it consumes energy and tends to produce unnecessary night-time brightness.
Intelligent lighting solutions are needed in order to reconcile these conflicting effects. Designers are confronted with major challenges because poor designs can have a serious impact on the environment and nature: the growth of plants may be altered, biodiversity suffers, astronomical observations become problematic and human sleep-wake rhythms can be disrupted. When implementing a lighting concept, it is therefore advisable to regard safety aspects as a
top priority.
Good energy efficiency is another distinctive characteristic of professional lighting concepts. Vertical façade lighting gets noticed from afar, making it easier for passers-by to get their bearings and making them feel more secure.

An illuminated building makes passers-by feel more secure and discourages vandalism.
Brightening vertical surfaces makes spatial orientation easier.
Vertical façade lighting is subjectively perceived as brighter than plain horizontal lighting.

Illuminated façades help make visitors and passers-by feel more secure. They are therefore an important aspect of integral lighting design. Dark areas where people could hide are lit. This also mitigates against vandalism.
Unlit parking spaces and company premises are really uninviting.
The extent to which an illuminated façade can improve security and enhance a location’s image is clearly demonstrated by the example of the Spar supermarket: its vertically brightened surfaces are visible from far away. This makes spatial orientation significantly easier.
Vertically illuminated surfaces are, assuming identical luminance, perceived as brighter than horizontal illumination. Thanks to precisely adapted light intensity, the building blends seamlessly into its setting. Passers-by feel more secure.

Façade Solutions

1 .Architectural

Architectural lighting solutions place emphasis on the architecture, materials and the lighting effect sought after by the architect and building owner. Architecture is illuminated without altering the character of a building. Individual façade elements are accentuated and the natural structures of the façade are emphasized. Bright, vertical surfaces produce a greater sense of security and assist orientation. An appealing townscape attracts tourists and investors like a magnet.

The right colour temperature underscores materials and character.
Uniform, vertical lighting emphasizes the surfaces of a façade without altering the architecture.
Precise accent lighting picks out distinctive architectural features.
Light lines define structure and allow easier orientation.
The architecture and contours of a building are visible, even when it is dark.
Different luminance levels on various surfaces differentiate the foreground from the background.

2 .Emotional

The purpose of lighting scenarios is not always to emphasize or embellish architecture. Emotional lighting involves transforming architecture or using light to shape it rather than simply embellishing it. Light patterns, structures and colours inject fresh character into plain, unpretentious architecture at night. Neutral objectivity is replaced by an emotionally perceived experience. Creative lighting elements invite the onlooker to contemplate and linger and provide an interestingly varied atmosphere. Decorative lighting elements make it possible to experience and perceive buildings more intensely. Lighting solutions also have the potential ability to forge an emotional link between architecture and onlooker.

Coloured light arouses people’s emotions.
Dynamic lighting changes have a long-distance effect and lure passers-by nearer.
Emotional lighting concepts bring architecture to life.
Lighting structures transform neutral architecture into an attractive façade.
Light can transform architecture.
Lighting structures with colour form patterns that can become a work of art.

There is a close mutual interrelationship between colour and light and materials which can fulfil various tasks: it can simply follow functional dictates but can also convey emotionality and aesthetic appeal.

Psychologists associate specific values with some colours and colour combinations. Colour can be used as a symbol, for instance, to make the purpose of a building apparent even from a distance. The idea of using cold colours to illuminate buildings on industrial and engineering sites is a tried-and-tested option, for instance.

3 .Communicative

Communicative lighting solutions convey information that goes beyond the mere appearance of a façade. They provide boundless scope for presenting brands, values and messages: media content
such as text, images and animations can be projected onto the controllable LED pixels on the façade. Stage settings that use corporate colours create a unique brand identity. Lighting concepts like this exploit the full potential of a society that lives at an increasingly fast pace. They enable companies, brands and towns to communicate with their environment even at night.

LED technologies and lighting control systems are making lighting ever more versatile. Media content can be played back onto light fields. This imparts information to the onlooker that goes beyond the appearance of the architecture. Communicative lighting concepts like this are deployed primarily in outdoor areas and are used as prestige projects for towns, brands and investors.

Light gives the corporate design of a brand a greater long reach effect.
Colour, direction and intensity of light make the character and positioning of a brand visible, even at night.
Façade lighting brings added prestige.
Pixel-driven façades use text and images to get information across.
Interactive façades react to passers-by and the environment.
Media façades transform a townscape and require considerable design sensitivity.

Façade lighting arouses emotions, grabs attention and conveys information of all kinds into the bargain. Unique content, such as images or text, are specific ways of imparting information. Using a specific colour that matches a company’s corporate design is one subtle form of communication.