https://youtu.be/v0Ox9mR8dn4

Designing a Lighting System for a Gym That Doubles as Worship Space

When you’re designing lighting for a gym that also serves as your worship space, you’re dealing with a completely different set of challenges than a traditional sanctuary. You need fixtures that can take a beating from basketballs and volleyballs, lights that can be quickly reset if they get knocked around, and a system that still delivers great visuals for weekend services.

We just wrapped up an installation in a full-sized gym that seats 400-600 people, and I want to walk you through the lighting choices we made and why they work so well for this unique environment.

The House Light Challenge

Let’s start with the house lights, because honestly, these might be some of my favorite house lights we’ve installed. We went with Meteor Lighting’s Rev 8 Prime lights in a recessed configuration. Here’s what makes them special: we only needed 15 fixtures to light this entire gym for church services.

Now, they’re not quite bright enough for actual gym use when you’re playing basketball, so the church still uses their utility lights for that. But for weekend services? They’re perfect. And here’s the real winner: these are full RGBW fixtures.

I’ve worked with a lot of RGB lights over the years, and these are some of the best I’ve seen. The colors are incredibly smooth, especially in the greens and blues where cheaper LED fixtures tend to fall apart. The color rendering on these is just fantastic.

Why We Went All Moving Lights for Front Lighting

Here’s where the gym environment really influenced our design decisions. When you’re in a space where lights can get hit by balls, you need fixtures that are robust enough to take the hit but also easy to realign quickly if something gets knocked out of place.

Our solution? We went with all moving lights for the front lighting positions. Ten fixtures total, a mix of wash and spot fixtures that can all be repositioned from the lighting console if needed. No ladders required.

Front Wash: Maverick Force S Spots

We chose two Chauvet Maverick Force S Spots for the primary front wash below the stage. These fixtures are interesting because they work almost more like ellipsoidal lights than traditional wash fixtures. They’re profile fixtures with a lot of directional control, which gives you much more precision than a standard wash light. We also have several of these across the back line for eye candy lighting.

For the main stage wash, we went with eight Chauvet Rogue R2X Washes. These are full-color fixtures that light up the entire stage really well. And like we always say, you generally don’t want color on your front wash, so we’ve got these set to a color temperature that looks great on skin tones and makes people look good on stage.

Hair Lights and Kick Lights

For the hair lights and kick lights, we installed twelve Pro Church Lights kick lights. These are full RGBW fixtures that are significantly more affordable than many other wash and kick light options out there. They’re very wide fixtures, so twelve of them cover this large stage really well. It’s easy to get good color out of them, and they work great as hair lights for the entire team on stage.

Backline Eye Candy

We have four Chauvet Maverick Force S Spots on the back line. These fixtures are packed with capabilities: multiple gobo wheels, a full color wheel, plus full RGB color mixing. You can actually combine the color wheel with the RGB system to create some really unique looks.

They also have a three-facet prism that you can make spin at different speeds. When you combine that with the gobos, you get some really dynamic effects. We also have four Chauvet R1E Spots in the space. These are very powerful, very bright lights with similar gobo and prism features.

Haze Distribution in a Gym

We implemented two Radiance Hazers from UltraTech, one on each side of the stage. Here’s a practical challenge with gym spaces: airflow is usually not great. Our solution was to shoot both hazers directly into small fans from Home Depot to help spread the haze out quicker. It’s a simple fix that makes a big difference.

The Surprise Winner: Portman P2 Evo Lights

I have to admit, when Jake first showed me these fixtures, I was skeptical. They just looked like basic blinders. But these Portman P2 Evo lights turned out to be really special.

They have full RGBW edge lights that give you all the color control you’d expect, but then they also have a center light fixture that’s incredibly bright. So you’re getting both color wash capability and powerful blinders in one fixture. We have four of these on stage, and you only need a few to make a significant impact on your stage look. They’re a little expensive, but they’re doing the work of multiple fixtures.

Programming for Volunteers

One of our goals with this system was to give the church flexibility without overwhelming their volunteers. We set them up with some basic presets to learn the system: pre-service look, countdown video setting, opening video setting that brings things down but keeps the Portman lights on, and several worship looks with different colors.

They’re not doing a ton of extreme looks right now, but they have the capability and the potential to expand into that as they get more comfortable with the system. For the sermon, many of the movers come down and we’re primarily using the kick lights to keep focus on the pastor. They also have a benediction setting where the lights turn up on the front floor since their pastor speaks from there on his way out of service.

The Durability Factor

This is what it all comes back to: durability and flexibility. In a gym environment, you can’t treat your lighting system like it’s in a pristine black box theater. Things are going to get hit. People are going to bump into things. But with moving lights that can be repositioned remotely, fixtures that are built to take some abuse, and a programming setup that makes it easy for volunteers to create great looks, this church has a system that will serve them well for years to come.

Whether you’re working with a gym space like this one or dealing with any non-traditional worship environment, the key is matching your equipment choices to the real-world conditions you’re working in. It’s not always about getting the fanciest fixtures. It’s about getting the right fixtures that will actually work in your space.