Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Architectural and feature lighting specialist i-vision recently completed an installation at the 700-capacity Ennis' Pub and Bar in Balbriggan, County Dublin, Ireland. I-vision's Geoff Jones was asked to design and realize an exterior lighting scheme for the venue.

The client, owner Gary Brown, together with Pete Williams of AVL, gave Jones the complicated brief to produce a highly visible and stunning yet visually subtle illumination for the building. Also, the dark-gray stone-constructed building posed several challenges for lighting.

Jones lit the front with seven Superlight CDM 150 up/downlights. Each fixture is fitted with a blue dichroic for downlight and a magenta dichroic for uplight. This breaks up the architectural lines of the frontage, producing a dynamic blue wash over the lower half, and an eye-catching magenta sweep across the upper floor. MA250 blue asymmetric floods were used to complete the picture on this facade, beaming onto the tiled roof.

The end elevation of the building is the most prominent feature to passing traffic. Jones continues the blue/magenta theme here, this time achieving the coloration using M400 asymmetric floods, top and bottom, with Colourite 400W lamps. These fittings were chosen for their high efficiency, low maintenance, and wide projection angles.

At the rear of the premises is the entrance to the new nightclub and the parking lot. It was decided to carry the overall lighting scheme into this area, again using the 150CDM up/downlights with the blue and magenta dichroic filters. The parking area's stone wall perimeter is lit using M400 blue Colourite symmetric floods, producing a gentle, alluring glow.

The lighting scheme has proved highly effective and a great hit with clientele. From an operational standpoint, the lighting is very economical to run and easy to maintain. The scheme has also been designed with ongoing evolution in mind, such as changing out the dichroics with new and different lighting images.