Your First Lighting Rig: What to Buy, in What Order

In this guide:The order · How many · Mistakes · Budget · Picks · FAQ

The usual first lighting purchase is eight colourful fixtures and a controller, and the usual result is a stage that is colourful and flat with nobody’s face visible. Buying in the right order gets a better looking stage for the same money.

This assumes a small venue, a school hall or a mobile rig, and no rigging work, which is a separate trade.

The buying order

• **Front light first.** Enough fixtures to cover the acting area evenly, in white or warm white, so faces are visible. This is the layer that makes it look like a production rather than a disco.
• **Back light second.** The layer that adds depth. Colour is fine here.
• **Control third.** A desk that understands fixtures, not just dimmer channels.
• **Colour wash fourth.** PARs, which is what most people buy first.
• **Effects last, and few.** One or two movers or a strobe, used sparingly.

Why that order? Because a rig with good front and back light and four PARs looks better than a rig with twelve PARs and nothing else, and the reasoning is in lighting a stage.

How many fixtures

Work it out rather than guessing, using throw distance and beam angle. The method is in beam angles and coverage.

For a typical school hall stage of around 8 metres wide, a workable first rig is four to six front-light fixtures, four to six back-light positions, six to eight PARs for colour, and a control desk. That is a real rig, and it is a smaller number of fixtures than most people expect.

The mistakes that cost the most

• **Buying all colour and no white.** The commonest and the most expensive to correct.
• **Buying fixtures with the wrong beam angle for the room.** A 15 degree fixture on a short throw lights a dinner plate.
• **Mismatched whites.** Two batches or two models will not match. Buy matched sets, see colour on stage.
• **Low CRI on faces.** Cheap fixtures with poor colour rendering make people look ill.
• **Forgetting the infrastructure.** DMX cable, adaptors, terminators, safety-critical hardware, distribution, and cases. That list adds up and is always underestimated. See DMX adaptors and terminators.
• **Buying a dimmer pack for LED fixtures.** Expensive and avoidable, see dimmers and relay packs.

Where to spend and where to save

• **Spend** on front light quality, because it is what everybody looks at, and on control, because you will keep it longer than the fixtures.
• **Spend** on cases if the rig moves. Fixtures die in vans, not in venues.
• **Save** on the colour wash layer, where a mid-range PAR is perfectly adequate.
• **Save** on effects, at least until the basic rig is right.
• **Do not save** on cable and distribution, because that is where reliability lives.

Frequently asked questions

What should I buy first for stage lighting?

Front light, in white or warm white, enough to cover the acting area evenly. Everything else is decoration until the audience can see faces.

How many lights do I need for a school hall?

As a starting point, four to six front, four to six back, and six to eight PARs for colour. Work the exact number from throw distance and beam angle rather than guessing.

Do I need a lighting desk, or will a controller do?

For LED fixtures with colour attributes, a desk that understands fixtures rather than raw channels is much easier to use, and you keep it far longer than the fixtures.

Should I buy moving heads first?

No. They are the most fun and the least useful in a first rig. Get the front, back and wash layers working, then add one or two.