A total of 26 units grace eight of the famous main display windows running along the prime Knightsbridge façade of the building. The battens run the full width of the rear of the windows, washing the back walls and offering a massive range of colours.
The creative potential of Pixel LED fixtures initially came to the attention of Harrods after they were used to illuminate a special installation window display promoting the James Bond 007 movie at the end of 2002. The lighting scheme for each display window is designed by the Harrods in house creative team. Sarah Southgate, window design and visual presentation manager approached Lightfactor Sales' Paul de Ville about purchasing and installing PixelLine permanently after the Bond display was such a success.
The 26 units were demonstrated and supplied by Andy Evans from Practical Creative Solutions (PCS), who also undertook the installation and programmed the lights. PixelLines also came highly recommended by Evans, who comments, "PixelLine is definitely the only LED product out there at the moment that would give the even top-to-bottom coverage that was essential in this application".
The 26 PixelLine battens in use are running at 2.86Kw per hour, whereas 23 incandescent linear fixtures with a colour gel facility would have run at 23Kw per hour - so significant electricity savings have been made by using PixelLines. Other savings include critical lamp replacement maintenance costs and down time plus general maintenance and its associated down time.
Maintenance on a conventional 20-cell linear MR16 batten with colour filters would have included changing approximately 520 MR16 type lamps! Colour filters absorb white light, allowing only the desired colour to penetrate through, which is extremely inefficient in permanent installations like this, and the gels would have needed constant replacement. The heat emitted by PixelLines is also substantially less, so additional costs can be cut by the requirement for less air conditioning to remove the heat from the environment.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
