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If you want to draw attention on a busy trade show floor, the first place to start is with a beautiful exhibit. But what about lighting? Event lighting is important, but often overlooked.
Effective trade show booth lighting does a lot of heavy lifting: It supports the overall brand image, draws people into a space, enhances products on display, and adds color, motion and visual interest to an exhibit.
For Czarnowski, an exhibit and event marketing company, lighting is critical for creating eye-catching trade show booths. “If your booth is too dark, no one wants to come in. But good lighting makes it feel cozy and inviting,” says Nate Barker, a project manager at Czarnowski.
Take a page from the company’s event playbook. Here are four ways Czarnowski lights up trade show booths.
Put the Brand in the Spotlight
To highlight corporate logos, many exhibitors hire show services to hang spotlights. But spotlights are expensive, and they can wash out some areas while creating dark spots in other parts of the booth.
Czarnowski often takes a different approach, using flexible LED light strips to put clients’ brands in the spotlight. As Barker explains, “LED strip lights are crucial to everything we do.”
For example, Zimmer Biomet highlights its brand with flexible, blue-hued light strips placed around the corporate logo. By adding light strips on both high-hanging identification signage and eye-level counters, the Zimmer Biomet booth becomes a bright beacon on the show floor.
Highlight Products
Many exhibitors use lighting to show off products within their booths. For many years, low-voltage halogen lights were the best solution. But halogen lights have a downside: They generate heat, which limits applications in small or hard-to-access spaces.
LED light strips now make it easy to add accent lighting to tight spaces like product displays, demonstration areas and awards cabinets. For example, Czarnowski added LED light strips inside all of Le Creuset’s product cabinets to create a beautiful and bright showcase for its cookware, bakeware, pots and pans.
Czarnowski has also added LED light strips to many aspects of Chevrolet’s booth designs. One of the most dramatic and eye-catching uses has been using them as under-lighting around car platform bases.
Become the Center of Attention
When a trade show exhibitor is surrounded by hundreds of other companies, including competitors, getting attention is critical. “Having an appealing booth with good lighting that draws crowds into the booth is the No. 1 goal, especially in the automotive industry,” Barker says.
One of the newest ways Czarnowski attracts attention for clients is through the use of subtly changing LED lights. In the case of Chevrolet, the LED light strips used around car platform bases were synchronized to simultaneously change colors in time with a video playing on a nearby wall.
The effect was an ever-changing and carefully choreographed lighting, sound and visual experience that garnered big attention during the 2017 Chicago Auto Show.
Light Up Support Signage
A common lighting mistake Barker sees is hanging single-bulb stem lights off a wall to illuminate signage. Barker says this often creates inconsistency, with “bright and dark spots that don’t give good color contrast to fabric signage and panels.”
Instead, Czarnowski uses LED strip lights or light bars inside graphics to create a subtle glow. LEDs fit in small, narrow spaces and don’t heat up like other lighting sources, making them ideal for trade show booth lighting.
For Czarnowski, LEDs are an affordable, attention-grabbing way to light up clients’ trade show booths. As Barker says, “LED strip lights and light bars are extremely flexible and easy-to-use, allowing us to add a whole other level of interest and artistic flair to drive traffic to a booth.”
About HitLights
HitLights delivers LED lighting solutions for event exhibits, displays, signs, theater and film productions, and manufacturing. CEO Bin Yu formed the company through the Louisiana State University Business Incubator Program in 2010. Since then, HitLights has grown to become a major player the LED industry. Customers come to HitLights for quality products, helpful customer service and creative solutions.