Fixture selection, power budgeting, console choice and what to check before collection day — a working guide for LDs and TDs operating lighting dry hire.
event lighting dry hireLighting dry hire encompasses a wide range of fixtures with genuinely different applications. Booking the wrong type — even at the right quantity — will underdeliver. An outline of the main categories:
Wide-angle, colour-mixed beams. Ideal for stage wash, audience blinders and atmosphere fill. Low-intensity events and corporate events are the primary use case.
Hard-edge, gobo-capable fixtures with zoom. Used for key lighting, gobos on surfaces, and tight aerial effects. Concerts, galas and theatrical events.
Tight parallel beam, high output. Best for aerial effects in smoky environments. Concerts and festival stages. Not suited to corporate events in low-ceiling venues.
Static, colour-mixed wash panels. Very common in event lighting as uplighters, backdrops and colour fills. Simple to deploy for non-specialist operators. Low power draw.
Linear pixellable fixtures. Used as floor coves, lighting walls, stairs or running along set elements. Common in TV and branded event work.
Manned fixture tracking a performer or presenter. Essential at galas, award ceremonies and live music events with lead artists. Always needs an operator.
Lighting power draw is one of the most commonly underestimated numbers in event production planning. Moving head fixtures in particular draw significantly more than LED pars, and the combined draw from a full rig can surprise a venue's technical team.
Approximate per-fixture draw for common types:
Multiply the per-fixture draw by the quantity of each type, add up across all categories, and compare against available venue supply. A rig of 24 moving heads averaging 400W each is drawing nearly 10kW before you have added PA, video or any catering infrastructure.
Book the console your LD has programmed on before. The most popular platforms in events are GrandMA (2 and 3), Chamsys MagicQ, and Avolites (Titan). Each has workflows that take real time to develop fluency with. An operator who has built shows on Chamsys can adapt faster to other Chamsys consoles than to a MA3 they have never used under pressure.
Confirm when booking:
Lighting cable is often underbooked. It is also one of the hardest things to source quickly on the morning of a load-in. When confirming your kit list with the hire company, work through the cable runs between distribution and individual fixtures and confirm:
If you are flying any fixtures, confirm whether rigging points are available in the venue and whether a qualified rigger has signed off the hang configuration. Do not rig without this confirmation.
If you are collecting a console and fixtures separately (from different sources or from a combined dry hire kit), pre-programming before load-in day is strongly advisable for any show with a structured design. You need to know that your fixture library matches the physical fixtures, that palettes load correctly and that your universe mapping reflects the physical patch you are wiring on site.
If the console is collected the day before the event, plan to spend at minimum an hour working through the show file offline to identify anything that will not work as expected before you are under live pressure.
Lighting is among the more fragile categories of event hire. Moving heads contain glass, internal optics, motors and lamps. At de-rig, confirm:
Describe your event and the look you are going for. We will put together the right fixtures and confirm availability.
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