How light and power can elevate the winter event experience

So, what can you do to make more of your event – and your budget? In this guide, we’ve brought in expert insight from Graham Dames, Commercial Director at Flow Power Solutions and Ali, the Sales Director for festive lighting and placemaking at Field and Lawn. Their tips will help you get started on curating the important finishing details around your Christmas and winter events. 

Whatever kind of event you’re working on, start with the big picture. Think about what you want to achieve, what you want your visitors to do and how you want them to feel. Getting clear on the big things will stop you getting derailed by the details too early on, and give you a reference point to refer back to when you’re making decisions further down the line.

Once you know what you want your visitors to do, you’ll have a better idea of the light and power you need to make that happen. For example, you might need to power pop-up market stalls, fairground rides or ice rink chillers at your winter event. Or you might want lighting that guides guests around a specific route, keeping them moving through your event space congestion-free.

Practicalities aside, festive lighting and seasonal illumination plays a huge part in how your guests feel, especially in the darker winter months when everyone wants to feel a little cosier, or tap into some festive joy. If you can pinpoint what you want their experience to be, you’ll be able to give your lighting supplier a clear brief that gets your project off to a great start.

That’s exactly what we do at GL events. Because as well as designing, delivering and installing event structures like marquees, we’re also part of the wider GL group, which includes lighting and placemaking specialists Field & Lawn, and expert power providers Flow Power. We regularly collaborate as one team to design whole events and experiences for all sorts of clients.

This is one of those areas where the sky (and your budget) really are the limit. Simple string lighting, festoon lighting, fairy lights and light curtains can go a long way towards creating that festive feeling, and are really effective everywhere from pop-up market stalls and large-scale marquees to street settings and woodland trails.

Projections are an attractive, effective way to illuminate a space or guide people along a dedicated route using arrows or themed motifs. Meanwhile RGB floodlights can create a warm wash of light across an area or against a wall, in a whole range of colours.

Dialling things up, you can use crossings – large light installations strung across streets or between buildings – to create a sense of destination and atmosphere. These usually include hanging elements like stars, which move gently in the wind, adding to their effect.

Large-scale light sculptures, 3D Christmas decorations, walkthrough installations and selfie points all bring a real wow factor to events, drawing people in, creating a great experience and encouraging them to create and share content that raises the profile of your event. In fact, these elements play a key part in the 100+ festive light displays our team install each year – including at London’s Oxford Street and the winter Festival of Light in Sunderland.

Lighting installations, sculptures and selfie points can be off the shelf or bespoke, again depending how much budget you have available. We work with suppliers right across Europe, so we can tap into a huge range of eye-catching off-the-shelf light features. And if you do have the budget to go bespoke, that can range from incorporating a logo or colour palette to designing the entire structure from scratch to fit in with your event theme.

However big your ideas are, if you can’t get enough temporary event power on site, they just won’t be doable. That’s why it pays to start having conversations with lighting and power suppliers early on. So if there’s a certain type of lighting you’d love to incorporate, talk to them about the power it’s going to need, and where that might come from. At GL, we work proactively with our lighting and power teams right from the start, to give you a joined-up picture of what’s possible. 

Having that in-depth understanding of lighting and power can be hugely important for the success of an installation or event, from both a visual and a safety point of view. For example, if you’re using a lot of LEDs and they’re not set up properly, that can lead to harmonic issues, causing everything from flickering or inconsistent lights to downtime, overheating and even fire risks.

So what about a power source for your event? Well, if you’re able to use the mains at your venue, that’s always the easiest way forward. But if you’re in a remote location, we can build generators into your package to give you the right level of power for everything you’ve got planned. Our power experts also look at which parts of your site are going to be the most energy hungry at certain times, so they can design an efficient solution that powers some parts down when your event closes for the night.

Beautiful event lighting doesn’t just need the right power infrastructure – it needs the right physical infrastructure to support it too. After all, the last thing any event needs is the winter weather making installations unsteady.

Inside a marquee, we’ll often install poles to hold up a ceiling of light. But in the street, in the woods or at an outdoor venue, you’ll need something else in place to hold up your event lighting. That might mean eye bolts drilled into a wall, anchors drilled into the ground, ballast blocks or catenary wires. 

A good lighting team will have no problem building these elements in, but you’ll always need permission from the landowner first – and finding the right person to ask isn’t always straightforward. Again, we’re always happy to use our experience to help you cut through any complexities and get the permissions you need, as quickly as possible.

It’s not surprising Christmas steals the limelight in the winter events calendar but there are so many other opportunities to bring people together, create a real connection to places and communities, and generate valuable revenue through ticket sales, shopping and catering. And winter’s just the start. Events like Oktoberfest, Halloween,  bonfire night and Diwali all take place in the darker winter months and can create strong commercial event opportunities.

If you’re planning a winter event for your town or venue, it can be a really worthwhile exercise to review your events calendar for the whole year. The lighting you bring in for one event can often be reused or repurposed for several more, creating cost efficiencies and new opportunities. If you’d like some advice on making that happen, our team’s experienced at helping clients look at the commercials behind their events, and the potential return on investment. 

For example, if you’re wrapping an avenue of trees in fairy lights for Christmas, perhaps along a shopping street, approaching the entrance to your venue, or around a dining area, it’s often a great, cost-effective idea to leave them wrapped all year-round. That way, you can make more of all sorts of other seasons and occasions, from summer evenings and outdoor concerts to Oktoberfest and German markets.

Lighting suppliers – like our Field & Lawn team – can often create lighting schemes that are adaptable as you move through the year. So a tree that’s wrapped and powered could have snowflake attachments in the winter, which can be swapped for simple lights or small flowers at other times, making the installation multi-seasonal and maximising your investment.

Year-round lighting can also have a knock-on effect on the safety of public spaces and streets, with even a small amount of string lighting helping to illuminate darkened spaces, discourage antisocial behaviour and make people feel more welcome. 

The bigger run up you can give your event suppliers, the better event they’ll be able to create. So approach them with those big-picture ideas of what you want to achieve – what you want your visitors to do and feel on the day. And if you can give them an insight into the potential power supply at your venue, even better. Share your ambitions, expectations, budgets and timescales and start an open, honest conversation about what’s possible, as early as you can.

At GL events UK we’re part of a global group with a 5,000-strong team, delivering complex events, all over the world. Here in the UK, that includes over 100 festive light installations every year. So, whatever you’re planning next, we’re always happy to talk it through. Just get in touch.