Event Room Lighting

Don’t assume that lighting for the room is at maximum brightness for the room when you walk in.

1. Scope out the room lighting panel in the leadup to the program (after bigger priorities such as streaming/audio). It’s worth knowing where the lighting panel is in the room, how to turn up and down as many panels may have 3-6 levels for room lighting settings. Some rooms may have multiple panels.

2. It’s worth setting the room lighting prior to the speaker arriving. The reason for this is:

   1. The PowerPoint screen, when evenly lit, is a great white balance card. When the speaker arrives and turns on the projector - then you are faced with need to ask them to turn the projector off to white balance.

   2. If you establish room lighting prior to the speaker arriving - what they don’t know - they don’t know vs going from dark to bright while the presenter is in the room and then...“gee - I prefer it dark”.

In some lighting situations, the PowerPoint screen may have a splash pattern of light on it. Thus, the screen is unevenly lit. This is bad for the following reasons:

1. The PowerPoint will have areas in the projection that will be washed out where the splash pattern is hitting, making some slides difficult to read, wildly dependent on the lumens (brightness) of the projector.

2. The speaker or attendee(s) in the audience may insist on turning down the lights cause they’re having a hard time reading the PowerPoint.

3. An unevenly lit PowerPoint screen makes for a poorer “white balance card”.

One way of fixing this screen light splash issue depends on how the screen is placed in the room.

If the screen on the floor (vs mechanical from the ceiling) and it readily is apparent that moving the screen forwards or backwards a foot or two will resolve the light splash on the screen, ask the venue staff if they can do this. Do not move the screen yourself.

The other solution to this may be handling the exact light bulbs that may be splashing on the screen. See process below