Colour changing lights are not new, they have been around the block and back several times.

Used right, they can create a very impressive atmosphere, seemingly adding a touch of luxury. Used wrong, they just ooze tackiness!

The difficulty of Introducing a colour change light option into an existing infrastructure has meant it hasn’t historically been an effective option, generally the need for additional control cores within the cabling has also prevented this from happening resulting in the only possible option being a complete overhaul to the infrastructure cabling. At this stage the idea is normally binned due to extra work in not only running of new cables but the disruption to decoration and the need for redecoration.

A colour change LED lighting package that can be slotted onto an existing cabling infrastructure without the need for rewiring or overhauling the decoration would be a desirable option for many.

So, Philips Color kinetics devised their own technology called powercore, this technology enables data to operate on the very same cores as the line voltage. Thus giving control and power down a standard 3core cable generally existing in most basic lighting applications.

Powercor have recently installed this for Philips Lighting UK to great effect at Nuffield Bromley within their swimming pool hall.

Nuffield already had some static green floods installed which shone up and across the vaulted ceiling above the pool to give some company branding effect to the area. These were removed and new colorblast Powercor fittings were installed onto the existing infrastructure cabling. Within the staff only accessed plant room at poolside lived the existing bank of rocker switches which the staff used to operate the lights – turned on in the morning and off at night.

So in addition, this simple switching method was removed and we introduced an iplayer3, again just utilising the existing cabling. This enabled some pre-set scenes for the staff to rotate between, resulting in some very effective colours from the colorblast luminaires.

Furthermore, Once a laptop is plugged into the iplayer3 the settings are endless, you can program almost any sequence of colours and time set events to operate automatically or manually.
All this control and effect from products retrofitted onto existing 3core cabling.

Hats off to Philips color kinetics, I’m sure this won’t be the last time we install this product in this type of environment to great effect.

As a Philips Value Added Partner, we work with the best products and new technologies to bring exciting lighting solutions to our clients