Illuminating Rolls-Royce luxury

To bring the luxury experience to life in the Rolls-Royce flagship showroom, Hygienic & Environmental Engineering Services (HEES) required a lighting control system that would light various zones depending on the desired ambience or requirements of the end users. In order to do this, it selected the RAPID lighting control system from CP Electronics.

In 2021, Rolls-Royce opened its new flagship showroom in Mayfair, London, where customers can enjoy an immersive retail experience inspired by Galleria-style shopping. As with many retailers looking to create more of a leisurely experience, the showroom includes various zones, including a 'speakeasy' bar and consultation areas with product samples.

Lighting up the showroom

Within this kind of retail application, light forms an important part of the visitor experience and so the end user had very specific requirements. Beyond simply switching lights on and off during opening hours, each zone required certain brightness depending on the desired ambience of the display area, for example, an early evening setting where lights dim in the bar and lounge areas.To achieve this, different light fixtures needed to be installed throughout the showroom and non-customer facing areas, with manual control available as well as automatic programming. Luxurious light fittings were arranged to fit around the intricately designed spaces, arranged around the shapes of the different zones that included display cars, AV installations and furniture for clients. This meant that lighting had to be installed and controlled so no shadows were cast over the show cars by the fixtures and fittings.

Setting the scene

Working with CP Electronics, HEES selected a fully addressable, hardwired RAPID system that included AV integration with store display, as well as scene set plates for store colleagues to control the lighting. Commissioned by a CP Electronics engineer, once the installation had taken place, scenes were set up for the different showroom zones and opening hours, and could be cycled through automatically or using the scene set plate.

This included automatic adjusting of lighting levels according to the time of day, keeping the showroom bright during the day and with a softer ambience for the later hours. This can be controlled manually through the scene setting plate but can also be adjusted automatically using light level sensors to drive up efficiency and reduce unnecessary energy usage.

Another scene that was integrated into the RAPID system was a display which would be the only illuminated part of the space at night time. One of the vehicles on display would be lit up while promotional footage on three screens played on a loop. Capable of integrating AV into lighting scenes, the RAPID system was able to be programmed to do this as part of an out of hours scene.

Commenting on the project, Sam Farrant, Specification Sales Manager (London) at CP Electronics, says: "For a luxury retail environment, the lighting is key to creating the right atmosphere for clients and so the controls specified had to be able to keep up with the design requirements of each zone. Using the RAPID solution, we were able to ensure the amazing light fittings across the showroom were illuminating the space in exactly the way the end client was envisaging. After, we made sure to visit the site to make the final commissioning tweaks and ensure all of the intricacies were ironed out with the end user, making sure they were happy with every element before handing over."

Such a specific retail application - with different zones requiring different lighting scenes - needed a system that could give showroom colleagues complete control over the environment. By installing the RAPID system, the space could have intelligent automatic scenes to cover all of the lighting needs when open and after dark.