Published on: May 23, 2009

Lighting Design International recently completed Lighting Design for the Temple Church in London/UK. It is a church built by the Knights Templars and was made famous by book Da Vinci Code.

The brief was to refurbish and update all lighting to enhance the structure.  Working with English Heritage, part of the brief was to design a scheme that would not cause further damage, and which would protect the fabric of the building from future deterioration. Another consideration was for the lighting to be removable or hidden when the church is used for filming.

The building is in two parts: the Round and the Chancel.

Here is some more info by LDI:

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A stone bench runs around the perimeter of the Round, decorated with stone gargoyles between arched niches. We created a new wooden bench to protect the stone and used its back to conceal a bespoke LED warm white linear light, catching the detail of the arches as well as uplighting the gargoyles to accentuate the character of the faces.  The bench also concealed the drivers and cables and was desgined to compliment the style of the columns.

Before the war, railings were in place to protect the effigies, but these were later removed.  Owing to the increase in visitors to the church and the effigies getting damaged, railings were required once again to protect the ten three-dimensional effigies of knights on the floor. We designed the railings ourselves, using them to conceal LEDs that graze light across the effigies.

The ceiling is uplit from the top of the central columns to create a lighting effect similar to the lighting in the Round.

Light to the vaulting is reflected back into the space, emphasising the structure as well as providing functional light. Fittings are coloured to match the stone and are thus barely noticeable.

The interior lighting is controlled by an automatic pre-set dimming control system with which different lighting scenes may be selected at different times of the day, without having to manually turn on and set a bank of individual dimmer switches at various times. The system operates by the last signal taking precedence which allows for easier control for multilevel lighting areas such as the staircases and lobbies. This control system also allows for the lamps to be dimmed to 95% to prolong lamp life, especially LV tungsten halogen lamp life.