Landmarks at night: how night lighting is designed

Darkness is half the design

The first rule of night lighting sounds like a paradox: do not light everything. The eye reads form through the contrast between light and dark. If the whole facade is flooded with even light, the building looks flat, like a cardboard cut-out. If the columns are lit and the recesses between them stay in shadow, the volume appears.

So designers start by asking what is characteristic of the building: the dome, the tower, the rhythm of the windows, the structure. Light is aimed at those elements, and the rest stays darker. A well-lit building often uses less light than a badly lit one.

The colour of light: warm and cool

White light is not just one thing. Its colour temperature is measured in kelvin (K). Light around 2700–3000 K is warm and yellowish, close to old incandescent bulbs. From about 4000 K upwards it is neutral to cool, a bluish white.

Warm light suits stone, brick and gilding: it makes them feel alive and inviting. Cool light brings out glass, steel and concrete and works well on modern buildings. Mixing the two on one facade has to be deliberate, or the building looks patched. There is a practical side too: cool, blue-rich light scatters more in the atmosphere and contributes more to light pollution.

From below, from the side, up close

There are a few basic techniques, usually combined:

• Floodlighting: wide projectors from a distance light the entire facade. It is simple, but easily makes the building look flat.
• Uplighting: light comes from the base upwards. It creates dramatic shadows and stresses the verticals of columns and towers.
• Grazing: a lamp almost parallel to the wall. It brings out the texture of stone, brick or carving.
• Outline lighting: lines of light along edges and structure, typical for bridges and towers.
• Light from within: glowing windows, stained glass or glass domes that show the building is alive.

Where the lamp sits matters too. A good design hides the fittings: by day they should not spoil the view, and at night the viewer should see the building, not the projectors.

No glare and no light pollution

Light that goes into the sky, into drivers’ eyes or into other people’s bedrooms is wasted light. That is why modern architectural lighting tries to put the beam exactly on the building, using focused projectors, shields and the right angle. The dark-sky movement recommends light only where and when it is needed, aimed downwards or precisely at the object, and in warmer tones.

More and more cities light their landmarks only until a certain hour. This saves energy and protects the night life of birds and insects, while the building still looks beautiful in the evening, when people are actually looking at it.

Famous examples

The Eiffel Tower. The golden lighting, in which light comes from inside the iron structure, was switched on for New Year 1985/86. It was designed by the lighting designer Pierre Bideau. Since 2000 the tower has also had a “sparkle” effect: thousands of small lights that twinkle for a few minutes at the start of each hour in the evening. According to the tower’s operator, images of the lighting are protected by copyright, so photos showing it for commercial use may need permission. Personal photos are generally considered fine.

The Empire State Building. Since 2012 the top of the building has had an LED system that can change colour and show animations. Colours are chosen for holidays, events and causes: in this way the top “speaks” to the city.

Tokyo Skytree. The tower, opened in 2012, has two main night lightings that alternate: a blue “Iki” (chic and bold) and a purple “Miyabi” (elegant). The idea gives the tower two faces without changing its shape.

The Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is famous for its red-orange colour, and at night light along its towers and cables traces its silhouette over the bay. It is a classic example of outline lighting of a structure.

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia. At night the cathedral’s facades glow in warm golden tones and its gilded domes shine over the square. Warm light sits naturally on the stone and gold.

LEDs and light that changes

LEDs changed the profession. They use less energy than old sodium and halogen lamps, last a long time and can change colour and brightness on a schedule. The same facade can be warm white on an ordinary evening, in national colours on a holiday and dimmer after midnight.

That freedom carries a risk. Not every building should flash in rainbow colours. Good designs use dynamic light sparingly, for occasions, and keep a calm basic scene for every day.

How we recreate the night in Construction Empire

In our game Construction Empire day turns into night, and since version 5.4.0 landmarks have their own night lighting. We use the same principles as real lighting designers, only in 3D.

Instead of one general projector on the whole model, each part of a landmark gets its own light. The cathedral’s facades glow gold while the domes stay darker, the bridge towers burn orange, and on Tokyo Tower and the Skytree the colours follow their real lighting. Technically these are emissive (self-lit) materials and a shader that knows which part of the model is a column, a dome or a window. At night the windows of houses and offices light up, and on some holidays certain landmarks change colour, just as in the real city.

The work is like a real project: we look at photos of the building at night, decide what should glow and what should stay in shadow, and check that it reads well from a distance. If you want to know how 3D graphics work in the browser at all, see the article how browser 3D games work. And you can see the night city for yourself at imperia.temidasoft.com.