The design of lighting for churches requires a particular sensitivity for the building's architecture, furnishings and the liturgical use of the various spaces. Recent advances in lighting technology have transformed the lighting of church buildings and the running costs and bulb life of these modern installations are much better. People in the congregation should be unaware of the light source or output; they should just see the results. If enough light is projected onto the focus areas and sources of beauty within the church, no one looks at where the light is coming from.
‘Ambient lighting’ is the base layer to which other lighting is added. It provides a general level of light, allowing the congregation to see one another and have some moments of peaceful prayer prior to the service. It comes from indirect sources such as wall illumination. The second layer of illumination is ‘task lighting’ to provide the congregation with the appropriate light levels for reading their service booklets, etc. Finally, successful lighting requires a third layer of illumination; ‘accent and architectural lighting’. This layer is used selectively to highlight items of liturgical and visual importance, such as areas of focused activity, religious symbols or significant architectural features.
The old tungsten filament lamps were only about 5% efficient and, worse, distributed the light in all directions. The new light fittings use two types of lamp bulb, tungsten halogen (about 10% efficient) and metal halide (about 15% efficient). They are designed to beam the light to where it is needed and a much lower wattage of lamp can be used. They have a vastly longer life expectation. Although we now have many more light fittings, the running cost should not be significantly greater. The metal halide lamps provide general illumination to the pew areas for reading. They cannot be dimmed. They take several minutes to warm up to maximum brightness; which can be a little disconcerting. The tungsten halogen fittings are intended to ‘add’ warmth to the church and are dimmable. They highlight the ceilings and clerestory walls in the nave and aisles. Supplemental fittings highlight features such as the pulpit, statues, altar, altar furnishings, the reredos and the Stations of the Cross.
The wiring of the system is in mineral-insulated copper-clad cable, colloquially known as ‘pyro’. This electrical cable is fire resistant. Due to oxidation, the copper cladding darkens with age and is therefore often used in historic buildings where it blends in with stonework. The cable can be bent to follow architectural shapes, giving a neat appearance when exposed. It would be very costly (and unnecessary) to wire so many lamps individually back to a switchboard and so the lighting circuits are divided into eleven intelligent ‘zones’; five of these being non-dimmable and six being dimmable. A lighting zone is a group of fixtures that operate together and are controlled by a single dimmer or switch. These ‘zones’ can be switched/dimmed individually but are also connected to a control device (commercial name GRAFIK Eye) that allows the user to create and recall custom preset lighting ‘scenes’ for repeated church activities. Scenes are set by adjusting the lighting zones to create the best combination for any church activity. They are then memorized by the device. It is possible to switch between scenes at the touch of a button or to change lighting from one activity to the next by fading from scene to scene at variable rates: from instantly to one hour.
The life of the lamps, although long, is shortened if they are switched on and off in quick succession by people experimenting. So we are seeking to create a number of pre-programmed 'scenes' tailored to different services to make it possible to illuminate the church, for say ‘Evensong’, by pressing one button. For special services, such as the Advent Service, a much more ambitious ‘scene’ could be set up with automatic fading or enhancement. The system can also create more intimate settings when the church is only partially filled. By dimming certain zones people are automatically ushered to a specific seating areas. Emergency lighting is provided to illuminate the areas adjacent to the exits in the event of power failure.