Trade Show Lighting

Using Trade Show Display Lights to Attract Your Visitors

When you’re trying to attract an audience, there’s one thing you need to keep in mind: how is your trade show booth lit?

To figure out how you want your booth to be lit, you must consider why you’re lighting your booth the way you are. There are three main ways that successful vendors use their lighting:

1. To attract customers
2. To set the atmosphere of their exhibit
3. To focus customer attention

When you’re attracting customers to visit your trade show booth, less is often more. You don’t have to broadcast the Bat-Signal on the ceiling or set up a full laser light show with strobes and colors. All that you need to do is put some careful thought into how you’re going to catch your customer’s eye from across the room. Think of the different types of trade show booth lights at your disposal as tools to help you reach your goal, not the goal itself.

One of the best ways to attract customers and subsequently set the atmosphere of your booth is by using proper trade show booth lighting – but “proper lighting” often depends on what you’re illuminating.

Are you illuminating people? Go for warm lights like trade show halogen lights – they’re much more flattering to people, especially when compared to the cooler blue lights like LEDs, which can make your sales associates look pale and pallid.

Illuminating products, on the other hand, is best done with cooler LED trade show lights, which can help pick out details and draw the customer’s eye exactly where you want it.

Once you’ve illuminated your people and your products, it’s time to focus the trade show lighting – this is a great way to maintain customer attention. Use your lighting to direct people’s gaze to where you want them to look.

Here’s what you should be highlighting, at the very minimum:

• The logo. People won’t stop if they can’t see who you are.
• Company branding/slogans. If someone must stop and think about what your company does, they’re even less likely to actually stop at your booth.
• Any products that you want to highlight. Showcasing products brings attention to them and can help clarify what your company does.

Warm Lighting and Cool Lighting: What’s the Difference?

We’ve made several mentions of “warm” and “cool” when it comes to booth lighting, but what do those words actually mean?

Light bulbs are divided by color temperature: softer, “warmer” lights have a lower color temperature, while harsher, “cooler” lights have a higher color temperature.

The three main color temperatures for trade show lighting bulbs are Soft White (2700 – 3000K), Bright White/Cool White (3500 – 4100K) and Daylight (5000K+). All color temperatures are listed in degrees Kelvin (K). The higher the temperature in degrees Kelvin, the whiter the color temperature – even among lights in the same temperature range. A 3000K light will be whiter than a 2700K light, even though they’re both listed as Soft White.

LED Trade Show Lights vs Trade Show Halogen Lights

Halogens and LEDs are the classic example of warm and cold light. A 100-watt halogen bulb has a color temperature of 3000K, right at the end range of the Soft White spectrum above. LED lights, on the other hand, range anywhere from 4000K (Cool White) to 7500K (Daylight). Aside from the obvious color temperature differences between LEDs and halogen lightbulbs, there are some other differences between the two:

Still not sure what trade show lighting bulbs you want to go with when it comes to your exhibit lighting fixtures? Not only do we offer most of our trade show lighting options in both LED and halogen versions, but we’ve put together a handy halogen & LED calculator so you can see which fits your budget better.

When it comes to purchasing your trade show display lights, Vispronet offers several different options, each with their own benefits:

Some of our trade show booth lighting is designed to be used with specific backdrops or banner stands from our product catalog. When you visit the category page for these items, simply select the type of display booth lighting that you need.

Trade Show Display Lights for Pop Up Displays

If the main section of your trade show exhibit is a tabletop display or a pop up booth, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice the ability to use lighting in your favor just because you’re taking up less space. Your booth lighting should still be doing a good chunk of the work when it comes to getting customers to your trade show table.

The most common lighting option for our table top displays and pop up displays is a clamp-on light, but we also offer pop-ups with their own backlighting system if that’s more your speed.

Attaching clamp-on lights to your display is as simple as putting the light where you’d like it and clamping it down, which means that you can illuminate your display any way you want.

Our clamp-on lights come in both halogen and LED varieties, so you can set up your displays to use exactly the kind of light you need to set the atmosphere that you want.

Using one of our curved booths? Put lights on the top and sides of the exhibit so that you can illuminate any part of your company’s branding or message that you want.

Trade Show Lighting for Roll Up Banners

No matter which banner you choose, you don’t have to sacrifice brand exposure. One of the best ways to point customers in the direction of one of your roll up banners is to use better banner stand lighting.

These lights attach right to the back-support pole of our banner stands – no need for clamps. With its color temperature hovering right around 3000K, the 50-watt trade show halogen lightbulb included with this display is great for when you need some warmer lights for your exhibit to set an atmosphere or to keep your associates (and your customers) looking healthy and vibrant.

No matter whether this is your first convention or you’re a veteran of the trade show circuit, a well-lit exhibit is crucial for capturing the attention of convention attendees and other passersby. People are interested in things that make them stop and wonder, “How did they DO that?” As you make deliberate decisions when it comes to what kinds of trade show lighting you want for your exhibit, both that question and the principles outlined here are a great guide for when it comes to wowing your potential customers with a sophisticated trade show booth.